
3 



BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
:\ . - 1899 , > , 



Glass t 11% 
Book '^B Sj 
Copyright K° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 

TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 
OF THE UNITED STATES 



THE 



Territorial Acquisitions 
of the United States 

An Historical Review 

BY 

EDWARD BICKNELL 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
1899 



Copyright, iSpp 
By Small, Maynard & Company 

( Incorporated ) 



TWO COPIES RECEIVE, 




Press of 
George H. Ellis •, Boston, U.S.A. 



PREFACE 



Because all the world is discussing the results 
of the war of i8p8, this historical review, 
which recites in detail all the precedents estab- 
lished by the United States since the beginning 
of its government, should aid very greatly the 
intelligent comprehension of the subject. 

It is evidently the author's intention to avoid 
partisanship or controversy. He has told the 
whole truth, in simple graphic language, con- 
cerning every event that has occurred which 
has any relation to the gradual growth of a 
small, scattered group of States into the mag- 
nificent domain which is now the United States 
of America ; and he has left the reader to his 
own conclusions as to the propriety and wisdom 
of extending the national control to lands beyond 
the sea. 

W. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter I. The Northwestern Territory. 
1787 Page 

Extent of the thirteen original States — The 
Northwestern Territory the first national domain 
— Organized before the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion — An additional bond of union and an incen- 
tive to a needed national feeling — Its organization 
the foundation of our system of territorial gov- 
ernment — Slavery within it forbidden, but tacitly 
permitted south of the Ohio — To be held under 
territorial government only temporarily — The 
same theory in regard to all the territories until 
1898. 

Chapter II. Louisiana. 1802. . Page 

First acquisition of foreign land — The Louisiana 
Purchase — The region explored and occupied 
first by the French — La Salle — Ceded to Spain 
in compensation for land lost by her in aiding 
France — Early quarrels between the United 
States and Spain — Navigation of the Mississippi 
in question — Its importance to the Western 
country — The treaty with Spain under Wash- 
ington's administration — Difficulties created by 
Spain in John Adams's administration — Spain's 
agreement to restore Louisiana to France — 
French possession a political and commercial 
danger to the United States. 

Chapter III. Louisiana (concluded) Page 

Jefferson's position — Monroe and Livingston ex- 
ceed their authority and grasp the great oppor- 
tunity — Treaty made selling Louisiana to the 
United States — Its further provision that States 

vii 



CONTENTS 



should in time be formed from the territory ceded 

— The opposition of the Federalists — Their alle- 
gations as to the incompatibility of the population 
with our institutions and the unconstitutionality 
of the annexation — The treaty ratified, however, 
with little effective opposition — Prophecies of ills 
to follow not fulfilled — No especial benefit to the 
South more than to the North — Free States as 
well as slave States formed within the territory — 
The Constitution stretched, but not amended — 
First precedent as to the power of annexation 
established — Consent of people not deemed neces- 
sary, another precedent. 

Chapter IV. Florida. 1819 . . Page 31 

Owned by Spain — Ceded to England and then 
restored to Spain — West Florida i i annexed*' to 
the Union — Another step in the development of 
the power of the national government — Jack- 
son's invasion in 1814 — Our possession in 1818 

— Troubles with the Seminoles — Jackson's sec- 
ond invasion — The whole territory finally bought 
by the United States under a species of duress — 
Boundary line between Mexico (Spanish) and the 
United States fixed at same time — Little question 
as to the constitutional power to acquire Florida — 
The Louisiana precedent strengthened — Louisiana 
and Florida a benefit to the whole Union. 

Chapter V. Oregon. 1 846 . . Page 40 

Acquired through discovery and by occupation — 
The fur trade — Captain Gray and the Colum- 
bia — Jefferson's encouragement — Lewis and 
Clark's expedition — John Jacob Astor's enter- 
prise — Dispute with England — The "Oregon 
Question " in politics — "Fifty-four forty or 
fight ' ' — Convention with England concluded — 
Boundary fixed by compromise. 

viii 



CONTENTS 



Chapter VI. Texas. 1845 . . Page 

Slavery potent in the acquisition of territory from 
Mexico — Early occupation by the Spanish of 
what is now our Southwest — Less conspicuous in 
Texas — Contraband trade — Dissatisfaction in the 
United States with the boundary line fixed in 
1 8 1 9 — Henry Clay's opposition. 

Chapter VII. Texas (concluded) . Page 

Mexican independence gained — Stephen F. 
Austin — Early settlers of Texas — Texas joined 
in one Mexican State with Coahuila — Injustice 
of the Mexican authorities — Texas American in 
its people and habits of thought — Two attempts 
on the part of the United States to buy Texas 
from Mexico — Texas petitions the Mexican gov- 
ernment to be allowed to become a separate 
Mexican State — Revolts from Mexico — Sam 
Houston's victory — Texas independent — Polk's 
election — Annexed to the United States by joint 
resolution — Annexation not to be condemned per 
se f but because of manner and time — Clay's views. 

Chapter VIII, The Mexican Cessions. 
1848; 1853 Page 

The Mexican War — Apparently a war of con- 
quest — Santa Anna — The Wilmot Proviso — 
Scott's victory — A large amount of territory 
ceded to the United States by the Treaty of 
Peace, and compensation given to Mexico — 
States to be formed from the ceded territory — 
The party responsible for the war defeated at the 
next national election — The Gadsden purchase 
— Last acquisition of contiguous territory by the 
United States — Results of the Mexican War — 
Beginning of the end of slavery — Texas the last 
slave State admitted to the Union. 



ix 



CONTENTS 



Chapter IX. Alaska. 1867 . . Page 75 

Its purchase from Russia — Commercial reasons 
govern the annexation — Not contiguous to the 
United States — A new precedent established — 
Consent of its people dispensed with as in previous 
cases except Texas — Expectation that it would 
remain under permanent territorial government — 
Such government practically that of a colony or 
province — Another precedent thus established — 
The discovery and occupation by Russia — Amer- 
ican interests — Fisheries — Mineral wealth — 
Ceded to the United States — No opposition to 
the treaty — Treaty rights of civilized inhabitants 

— Acquisitions of to-day different in character 
from any before. 

Chapter X. Hawaii. 1898 . . Page 83 

Annexation of Hawaii justified on naval grounds 
or to protect American interests paramount in the 
islands — Its people — Early history — The 
Kamehameha dynasty — Treaty with the United 
States in 1874 — American capital invested in 
the islands and the American colony there — 
Revolution of 1887 — Suffrage extended to aliens 

— Accession of Liliuokalani — Schemes for annex- 
ation — Sympathy of the United States minister 
with the movement. 

Chapter XI. Hawaii (concluded) . Page 92 

Queen proposes a new constitution — Committee 
of Safety formed — Monarchical system of govern- 
ment abrogated and queen deposed — Annexation 
to the United States proposed — Action of United 
States marines — Treaty of annexation laid before 
the Senate by President Harrison — Withdrawn 
by President Cleveland — His action in the matter 

— The Republic of Hawaii proclaimed — An- 



x 



CONTENTS 



other treaty of annexation proposed by President 
McKinley — Effect of our war with Spain upon 
annexation — A new thought — Annexation 
finally accomplished by joint resolution — Course 
of our government not to be viewed with com- 
placency, whatever the results. 

Chapter XII. Conclusion . . . Page 100 

The recent acquisitions in the West Indies and 
the East — Result of a review of our past acquisi- 
tions: precedents made allowing our government 
to extend the boundaries of the country wherever 
it deems it proper so to do — The story not all 
creditable — Action through ignorance of facts at 
the time — Precedents allowing annexation un- 
questionably having been made, shall we limit our 
power ? — The government of territories wherever 
situated or however peopled a trust which cannot 
be evaded. 

Appendix Page 106 



xi 



THE 

TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 
OF THE UNITED STATES 



CHAPTER I. 



THE NORTHWESTERN 
TERRITORY. 

When England recognised the indepen- 
dence of the United States of America, and 
treated them as u free, sovereign, and inde- 
pendent States," those States occupied a terri- 
tory extending, roughly speaking, from the 
Great Lakes at the north to the 31st parallel 
of north latitude, or about fifty miles north 
of the Gulf of Mexico, at the south; and 
from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. All 
the rest of the country embraced in the 
United States of to-day south of British 
Columbia was then practically Spanish terri- 
tory, mostly unexplored and unknown. To- 
day, in addition to Alaska and Hawaii and 
the more recent possessions, the United 
States of America extends quite to the Gulf 
of Mexico on the south, and to the Pacific 
on the west ; and every foot of the increase 
of territory, except the Oregon country and 
Texas, has been gained through a cession 
from some foreign power, with no great 
amount of inquiry as to the consent of the 
inhabitants of the territory thus acquired. 

3 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

The United States began to acquire na- 
tional territory of its own, as distinct from 
the ownership of the individual States, very- 
early in its career, by absorbing the North- 
western Territory, so called. Before the 
Constitution was adopted and while the 
States were bound together by the Confed- 
eration, under which they fought out the 
Revolutionary War, but which was so weak 
as barely to survive it, the beginning of a 
national domain was made. The settled 
portions of the States were, broadly speaking, 
along the Atlantic east of the Alleghanies ; 
and between these portions of the States and 
the Mississippi there was a comparatively 
large and certainly rich country, which was 
claimed by several of the States. 

The charters under which some of the 
Colonies, subsequently States, claimed their 
land, carried their respective boundaries at 
least to the Mississippi, so far as the Eng- 
lish title extended ; but owing to careless- 
ness or lack of geographical knowledge 
when the charters were made, and the little 
comparative value of the unsettled wilderness, 
there were a duplication of grants and a 
confusion about them which made the titles 
of the western portions, still unsettled, ob- 



4 



NORTHWESTERN TERRITORY 

scure, doubtful, and conflicting. These 
western lands were constant sources of 
irritation, and bade fair to involve the new 
nation in disastrous domestic difficulties. 
They also worked an injustice toward such 
States as had no such western lands. The 
States having land outside of their own 
proper domains had property from which to 
reimburse themselves for the losses incurred 
in gaining independence, while the other 
States had no such resources ; and yet all 
had borne, in a greater or less degree, the 
pains, hardships, and losses of the struggle. 

To end the possibility of domestic dissen- 
sions arising out of conflicting claims, and 
especially to give the Confederation some 
property from which to pay its running ex- 
penses and the debts incurred in the war 
waged for the benefit of all, the various 
States claiming such lands, at different times, 
ceded to the United States these western 
lands ; and so in this way the national gov- 
ernment became a land-owner. The land 
north of the Ohio, known as the North- 
western Territory and comprising the pres- 
ent States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wis- 
consin, Michigan, and part of Minnesota, 
came into the hands of the United States 



5 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

between 1780 and 1786. The land south 
of the Ohio was not ceded to the United 
States until later; but by 1802 the govern- 
ment held what is now Mississippi and Ala- 
bama (except a strip across the southern part 
of them owned by Spain) as a territory, while 
Kentucky and Tennessee, which had been 
ceded by Virginia and North Carolina, had 
been admitted as States. 

No more important domestic occurrence 
marked our early history than the cession to 
the United States of the land comprising the 
Northwestern Territory. The Union was at 
that time in the greatest danger of falling to 
pieces. The Confederation had served to 
carry the States through the war. The com- 
mon cause and common danger had acted to 
hold them together ; but, when peace came, 
the strain seemed almost too much for the 
weak bonds of confederation. Local jeal- 
ousies, quarrels about territory, commercial 
conflicts between the States, the poverty and 
confusion occasioned by war, and the lack 
of a national feeling shown through the war 
itself, — all combined to give color to the 
prophecy of Europeans, that the Union 
must soon dissolve through internal dissen- 
sions. Moreover, Congress was obliged 
6 



NORTHWESTERN TERRITORY 



continually to press the States for money, to 
remind them of their obligations. There 
was not enough of active honesty and patriot- 
ism left after the war to urge a prompt per- 
formance of their duties to the Union, how- 
ever careful the States might be to look out 
for their own immediate and individual inter- 
ests. The people were apt to think first of 
their respective States, not of the Union. 
They had struggled continuously for many 
years, had been through an eight years' war, 
with all the anxieties and deprivations which 
that implies ; and it needed a very sturdy 
patriotism and a very deep-rooted virtue, 
widely diffused, to keep up the struggle after 
the outside pressure was removed. The 
country was in the same state of weakness, 
with the same low vitality, in which a man 
finds himself after a high fever. But when 
the Union, by gaining this valuable tract of 
territory, possessed a national domain, — a 
territory which, thrown open to immigration, 
would pay the cost of the entire war, — less 
than ever would it need to call upon the 
States for money. It possessed something 
in which every State had an interest, some- 
thing which nourished that national feeling 
and pride so sorely needed. 



7 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

It was a territory which meant very much 
to the people of the United States. It was 
within it that France had tried to gain a foot- 
hold, and, by drawing a chain of settlements 
and fortified posts around the English Colo- 
nies, to stifle them or drive them into the 
sea. As the Colonies grew in population, 
and there were fewer openings at home for 
the adventurous and colonising spirit of our 
fathers, it was to this territory along the 
Ohio and down the Mississippi that they 
turned their eyes and gave their thoughts. 
It was the efforts made for its possession by 
the French and English which began the last 
and decisive French war in this country. It 
was to gain a clear title to it that the Colonies 
had contributed their blood and their treas- 
ure, and the victory gained at the fall of 
New France was theirs as well as England's. 
And it was this same Northwestern Territory 
which the skill and bravery of George Rogers 
Clark and his company had conquered in the 
Revolutionary War after the British had 
taken possession, and which was saved to 
us when the treaty of peace was made in 
1783 only by skilful diplomacy. 

So when all this Northwestern Territory, 
the land north of the Ohio, became a 

S 



NORTHWESTERN TERRITORY 



national domain, the new nation had some- 
thing in which the people had an interest 
outside of their own particular States. It 
was one bond of union at a time when the 
old bonds were loosening. The famous 
Ordinance of 1787, by which this territory 
was organised and governed, formed the 
model for governing the territories afterward 
acquired. It was the beginning, and it laid 
the foundation for our system of territorial 
government. In the light of after events, 
perhaps the most important provision in the 
ordinance was the prohibition of slavery 
within the territory. Thus it came about 
that the States formed within that section of 
our country were free States at their begin- 
ning. 

The Constitution went into effect in 1789, 
and our government as it is to-day came into 
being. To the Union under its new estab- 
lishment Georgia and North Carolina ceded 
their western lands, and in framing measures 
for the government of these new territories 
the main provisions of the Ordinance of 
1787 were followed, except that slavery was 
not forbidden. 

Up to this time the United States possessed 
territory only which had been surrendered to 



9 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

it by the States. The national domain was 
common property contributed by the States 
themselves, which did not add to the area 
of the United States taken as a whole. 
This land, surrendered to the United States, 
plainly was to be held under territorial gov- 
ernment only until it developed sufficiently 
to be fit for local State government. All the 
acts of Congress and every measure relating 
to it show this. Every other acquisition 
since has been of foreign territory ; but, like 
the North-western Territory, these acquisi- 
tions, down to that of Alaska, have been 
domains contiguous to the States then exist- 
ing, and fitted by the population, which 
would naturally flow into them, to become 
like the older States in their people and 
habits of government and thought. It was* 
the natural expectation and intention of our 
people, stipulated in all the treaties of an- 
nexation until that of Alaska, that these dis- 
tricts temporarily held under territorial gov- 
ernment should eventually become States. 
That idea has been connected with all our 
acquisitions down to the time of the purchase 
of Alaska. 



CHAPTER II. 



LOUISIANA. 

When the United States under its new 
form of government was fairly started, it 
began to grow in territory as well as in other 
wealth. It then began to acquire foreign 
land. The question of the constitutionality 
of such acquisitions was raised at the outset ; 
but the first annexation was made notwith- 
standing, and the validity of the act has never 
been overruled. 

The purchase of Louisiana, our first acqui- 
sition of foreign territory, grew out of the 
situation of the States, and of the necessity 
for a seaport for the Northwestern Territory 
and the Mississippi Territory and the States 
already formed in that section of the country. 
These reasons, and the situation of the polit- 
ical parties at that time, prevented any effec- 
tive opposition to the transaction. 

Louisiana was the name given by the 
French to the region drained by the Mis- 
sissippi and its tributaries. The territory 
embraced extended from the Alleghanies to 
the Rocky Mountains. France claimed all 
of it by a title of discovery and occupation, 

1 1 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

alleging the exploration of the Mississippi to 
its mouth, and the French settlements made 
from New Orleans to Canada. The prior 
discovery of De Soto had passed out of 
mind, or at any rate had not been followed 
by occupation, when La Salle, the French- 
man, and one of the greatest of the early 
heroes of this country, with a perseverance 
and endurance never excelled, after repeated 
trials, thwarted by temporary failure and by 
embarrassments of every kind, sailed along 
the Great Lakes, penetrated the wilderness to 
the Illinois River, then journeyed down that 
river to the Mississippi, and down the Mis- 
sissippi to the Gulf of Mexico. His mag- 
nificent scheme of military and trading posts 
along the great waterway, of alliances with 
the Indians, of forming a power which 
would check the Spanish in an advance from 
Mexico, and bind the English to their posts 
east of the Alleghanies, he did not live to 
put in practice himself ; and, fortunately for 
England and ourselves, it was only entered 
upon when the great struggle between 
France and England for the possession of 
this country began. After seventy-four 
years of almost continual warfare the French 
were overcome. 

12 



LOUISIANA 

When the end came, and France was 
obliged to strip herself of her American 
possessions, she released to England, in 
addition to Canada, the country east of the 
Mississippi down to the Spanish possession 
of Florida. The vast domain west of the 
Mississippi she gave to Spain to repay that 
power for what it had lost in the fight ; 
for, in the last years of the struggle, Spain 
had come to the aid of France, and had been 
bereft of some of her own territory as well. 

So Spain succeeded to the French title to 
Louisiana, which name was now confined 
to the land west of the river. A few Span- 
ish settlements sprang up in this region, but 
there was no such vigour in Spanish colo- 
nising as to leave any lasting impression. 
The change was not acceptable to the 
citizens of New Orleans, who were French 
in blood and remained so in sympathy. 

Meanwhile the English Colonies grew 
apace. Settlers began to penetrate in in- 
creasing numbers through the Alleghanies 
into the fertile country of the Ohio and the 
northwest. Kentucky became settled in a 
measure. Tennessee began to upbuild. The * 
United States came into being ; and the new 
nation, with all the energy of youth, was 

*3 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

stretching toward the Mississippi, and look- 
ing longingly down the river to the Gulf. 
Spain, in the spirit of monopoly, common 
enough in that age, or fearing for her other 
possessions along the Gulf, at first tried to 
restrict the navigation of the Mississippi to 
her own people, while the whole of the 
United States along the Mississippi and Ohio 
felt shut in without the outlet which nature 
had put at its feet. The free navigation of 
the Mississippi was a burning question to 
citizens of Ohio and Kentucky and the then 
western part of our country. While Spain 
held New Orleans, there was bound to be 
trouble unless restrictions on the commerce 
of the river were removed. For Spain then 
held the territory on both sides of the river, 
and the United States nowhere touched the 
Gulf ; Florida, which in those days extended 
from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, having 
been returned to Spanish authority after only 
a short English possession. 
• In the latter days of the Confederation 
and in the early days of our republic, Spain 
was an uncomfortable neighbour ; and Wash- 
ington's administration continued to be full 
of difficulties with her over the northern 
boundary of Florida and the navigation of 

*4 



LOUISIANA 



the Mississippi. She refused to allow the 
free navigation of the river until the boun- 
dary dispute was settled. The people of our 
then western section were not slow in ex- 
pressing their feelings upon the situation. 
At various times Spain tried to foment dis- 
sensions between Kentucky and Tennessee 
and the rest of the Union ; but, although 
she failed to bring about a separation, her 
acts drove the western settlers to the Presi- 
dent and Congress with passionate remon- 
strances. The opinion was openly expressed 
that there was opposition between the east- 
ern and western parts of the country, and 
that the attempts of our government to open 
the river had been feeble and insincere ; and 
there were some grounds upon which to base 
such an opinion. The western men claimed 
as a merit that they had so long abstained 
from using the means they possessed for the 
assertion of " a natural and inalienable right." 
Such demonstrations of feeling seemed sure 
to bring us into hostilities with Spain, if they 
did not kindle difficulties among ourselves; 
and Spain's alliance with England made her 
very positive and arrogant in tone. But at * 
length, in 1795, Washington's administra- 
tion managed to conclude a treaty with Spain 



15 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

which nominally settled the boundary dis- 
pute and threw open the Mississippi to free 
navigation, and also gave the people of the 
United States the privilege of depositing mer- 
chandise for transshipment in New Orleans, 
or some other designated port on the river 
near there, free of duty. While Spain was 
not very prompt in observing the boundaries 
laid down in this treaty, the Mississippi 
problem was settled for the time being. 
After that the relations of the United States 
with Spain were fairly friendly, except once 
when, in John Adams's administration, the 
right of deposit was interdicted. The Presi- 
dent had determined to compel Spain to open 
a depot for American trade in accordance 
with the treaty, when the right of deposit 
was restored, whereupon everything was 
again serene. This state of things con- 
tinued till 1802. 

In that year it became known that in 
1800 France had made a secret treaty with 
Spain under which Louisiana was to be re- 
stored to France upon certain conditions 
since fulfilled. Napoleon was then Consul, 
and, with the rest of his contemporaries, 
shared an ambition for distant possessions, 
for colonies whose trade he might monopo- 

16 



LOUISIANA 



lise. Egypt was, even then, a rather un- 
certain possession. Louisiana, with its vast 
extent and its natural resources, having 
formerly belonged to France, the pride of 
France would be gratified by its return. It 
would give Napoleon a foothold in America, 
the control, as he believed and intended, of 
the commerce of the Great River, with pos- 
sibilities in the future hardly to be realised. 

Napoleon had no trouble in bringing Spain 
to his wishes. He had become too strong 
to have difficulties raised by that country, 
and so the treaty was made. In 1802, 
having fulfilled his part of the agreement, 
Napoleon got ready to take possession of his 
American acquisitions. He assembled his 
vessels and troops, and made some negotia- 
tions to obtain Florida also : then he had to 
wait awhile. The indiscretion of the Span- 
ish officials allowed the particulars of these 
negotiations to reach the English ambassador, 
whereupon British jealousy at once took 
alarm and raised a mass of obstacles. So, 
in 1803, he found himself still without 
possession of Louisiana and on the eve of 
war with Great Britain. In the event 
of war at that time Louisiana was vulner- 
able. To say nothing of what the United 



17 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

States might be tempted to undertake, Eng- 
land would surely strike there ; for not a 
French soldier was on American soil, and 
hardly one could be spared from other 
quarters. A message from George III. to 
his Parliament, showing preparations for war, 
dispelled all the colonial dreams of the First 
Consul. It became then his object to dis- 
pose of Louisiana to the best advantage. 
Selling it to the United States would help 
him to some needed money and do an ill 
turn to England. It not only would make 
the United States a little more friendly, per- 
haps, but would make it a power which 
might threaten England's American posses- 
sions, and, as he said, a maritime rival which 
would sooner or later humble England's 
pride. 

The Consul very easily came to arrange- 
ments with the United States. Much as 
its people disliked to have Spain at the 
mouth of the Mississippi, they felt that it 
would be worse to have a strong power like 
France there, especially in view of what 
seemed to be her proposed policy. French 
forces sent to Hayti were believed by many 
to be destined ultimately for Louisiana, to 
maintain French dominion supreme there 

18 



LOUISIANA 



and extend it if possible. In 1802, acting 
under French influence, Spain again closed 
New Orleans as a place of deposit. This 
virtually closed the Mississippi to the people 
of the United States, and was a sample of 
what might be expected when Napoleon 
should get possession. 

When this action of Spain became known, 
and the people of Kentucky and of the 
western States and territories began to feel 
the results of this unfriendly policy, and 
trade down the river ceased, the pressure 
upon the administration to take aggressive 
measures became almost too strong to be 
withstood. The Federalists taunted Jeffer- 
son with cowardice. It seemed difficult for 
them to find words to express their disgust at 
his lack of action. Perhaps they took this 
attitude for political reasons, hoping to gain 
western support ; but we should prefer to 
believe an honest patriotism moved them. 
The Mississippi difficulty was no new thing, 
as we have seen. Washington had only 
averted a possible secession of the western 
States, or war with Spain, by the treaty of 
1795, and John Adams stopped at force 
only because Spain yielded. So the Federal- 
ists, not having now the responsibility of the 



19 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

government on their shoulders, might well 
urge the most vigourous measures. Besides, 
party feeling was high and unreasonable ; and 
many a Federalist honestly believed that 
Jefferson and his party were under French 
influence and ready to cater to Napoleon's 
wishes. But war did not coincide with 
Jefferson's policy. Yet, " always a patriot 
and always intensely partisan," as he was, 
he was fully sensible of the fact that the 
presence of the French in New Orleans was 
perilous to his country as well as to his 
party. It was the popular sympathy with 
the French republic, and the bitter aversion 
to England, which was one factor in the 
overthrow of the Federalists, who were 
looked upon by many as being too fond of 
aristocratic and even monarchical ideas. If 
France held New Orleans, there was every 
reason to believe that she soon would be an 
object of bitter detestation, and the English 
party here would be in the ascendant. That, 
apparently, meant ruin to Jefferson's party. 
The country had not yet become emanci- 
pated from European politics, and party 
policies here turned very much upon the 
question of favouring England or France. 



20 



CHAPTER III. 



LOUISIANA (Concluded). 

But beyond merely a question of party 
success or failure there was great danger in 
the proposed French occupation. Jefferson 
writes as follows to Livingston, our minister 
to France : " The cession of Louisiana . . . 
by Spain to France works most sorely on 
the United States. ... It completely reverses 
all the political relations of the United States, 
and will form a new epoch in our political 
course." And he goes on to speak of France 
as our natural friend, " as one with which 
we could never have an occasion of differ- 
ence. Her growth, therefore," he writes, 
" we viewed as our own, her misfortunes 
ours. There is on the globe one single spot, 
the possessor of which is our natural and 
habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through 
which the produce of three-eighths of our 
territory must pass to market ; and from 
its fertility it will erelong yield more than 
half of our whole produce, and contain more 
than half of our inhabitants. France, placing 
herself in that door, assumes to us the atti- 
tude of defiance. Spain might have retained 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, 
her feeble state, would induce her to increase 
our facilities there, so that her possession of 
the place would be hardly felt by us ; and it 
would not, perhaps, be very long before 
some circumstances might arise which would 
make the cession of it to us as the price of 
something of more worth to her. Not so 
can it ever be in the hands of France. The 
impetuosity of her temper, the energy and 
restlessness of her character, placed in a 
point of eternal friction with us and our 
character, which, though quiet and loving 
peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high- 
minded, despising wealth in competition 
with insult or injury, enterprising and ener- 
getic as any nation on earth, — these circum- 
stances render it impossible that France and 
the United States can continue long friends 
when they meet in so irritable a position." 
And, certainly, it appeared very ominous to 
peace when Spain, plainly under French in- 
fluence, interdicted the right of deposit at 
New Orleans. It looked very much as if 
Napoleon was trying to get possession of 
Louisiana unfettered by any question of treaty 
obligations entered into by Spain, and that he 
did not propose to succeed to a condition of 
affairs brought into being by such a treaty. 



LOUISIANA 

In addition to all these objections there 
was another, and a most grave one, to the 
possession or acquisition of Louisiana by 
France. It meant almost certainly the con- 
quest of that province by England. With 
England north of the United States, and on 
its west, and in control of the Mississippi, 
the United States would be forced into an 
alliance with her or else into a bitter strug- 
gle, the end of which would be impossible to 
foresee. So it appeared that the only way out 
of the difficulty was for the United States to 
possess Louisiana for herself. 

Accordingly, when Jefferson learned of the 
French treaty with Spain, and was informed 
of the closing of New Orleans to our mer- 
chants, aware, too, of the gathering war- 
clouds in Europe, he saw his opportunity. 
He made Livingston, who was already on 
the ground, and James Monroe, ministers 
plenipotentiary to purchase the Island of 
New Orleans, as the district around that city 
was called. At a little earlier date, when 
Livingston had presented a memorial respect- 
ing the wishes of the United States as to the 
navigation of the Mississippi and the acquisi- 
tion of New Orleans, Napoleon had paid 
little attention to his representations and 

2 3 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

offers. It was at that time that he had his 
own purposes to serve, and Louisiana and 
its trade were wanted for France. When, 
however, as we have seen, war with England 
became imminent, his purposes changed. 
Instead of accepting an offer to buy New 
Orleans or to arrange a treaty allowing us 
the privileges held under Spanish agreement, 
he expressed a desire to sell the whole of 
Louisiana. Monroe had now arrived in 
Paris, and no time was lost in coming to 
terms. Although the envoys had no author- 
ity to buy more than New Orleans, they per- 
ceived the benefit which the acquisition 
of the whole of Louisiana would give the 
United States. So a treaty was promptly 
arranged, to be ratified by the respective na- 
tions, by which Louisiana was ceded to the 
United States for about $15,000,000. 

The territory thus ceded was that re- 
leased to France by Spain, with its northern 
and western boundaries indefinite and very 
elastic. The boundary between Louisiana 
and Spanish Mexico was not defined until 
1 8 19, when the river Sabine was so desig- 
nated. 

The treaty stipulated that the inhabitants 
of Louisiana " should be incorporated into 



24 



LOUISIANA 

the Union of the United States, and ad- 
mitted, as soon as possible, according to the 
principles of the Federal Constitution, to 
the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, 
and immunities of citizens of the United 
States. And in the mean time they should 
be maintained and protected in the free en- 
joyment of their liberty, property, and the 
religion which they professed. " The ac- 
quisition carried the United States to the 
Rocky Mountains, or, if Oregon was in- 
cluded, as has been claimed, to the Pacific 
Ocean ; and the region contained a popula- 
tion of eighty thousand, of which half were 
slaves. The larger part of this population 
was, of course, in or about New Orleans. 

Napoleon soon ratified the treaty on the 
part of France, and Jefferson, with a natural 
satisfaction, at once communicated the facts 
to Congress and laid the treaty before it for 
ratification and the necessary legislation. 
He hinted at the possible necessity of a con- 
stitutional amendment, but he advised his 
friends to say very little on that point. 

The annexation naturally met with a 
bitter opposition from the Federalists, and 
some of Jefferson's own party doubted its 
wisdom ; but the mass of the people, partic- 

*5 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

ularly those of the south and west, heartily 
approved it. The opposition said that " the 
acquiring territory with money is mean and 
despicable." It held that Louisiana was a 
wilderness of little value, while the popula- 
tion was slightingly spoken of as a " Gallo- 
Hispano-Indian omnium gatherum of savages 
and adventurers, whose pure morals are ex- 
pected to sustain and glorify our republic." 
The opposition could not believe that such a 
class of population was suited to a republi- 
can form of government, and it did not seem 
to think of or believe in immigration of our 
people. As a matter of fact, neither party 
appreciated the real value of the purchase. 
Again, the Federalists opposed the annexa- 
tion because the addition of so much new 
western and southern territory would give 
such an undue predominance to southern 
ideas and institutions as to threaten the 
destruction of the political influence of the 
northern and eastern States. Besides the 
insinuation that Jefferson simply took this 
method of helping France with a little ready 
money when it was badly needed by her, the 
Federalists denied the constitutionality of the 
measure, although they as a party, especially 
when in power, so construed the Constitution 

26 



LOUISIANA 

as to give the government the largest Implied 
powers. The anti-Federalists, or, more prop- 
erly at this time, the Democratic-Republi- 
can party, believed in limiting those powers ; 
but, when it got control of the government 
and felt its responsibilities, it also became 
more general in its policy, and favoured the 
annexation. So, in spite of all opposition, 
especially since the Federalists were weak in 
numbers in the Senate, the treaty was 
ratified, the legislation to carry it into effect 
passed, and Louisiana became a part of the 
United States. 

The Federalists prophesied all manner of 
evil from this result. Fisher Ames writes to 
Christopher Gore in October, 1803: "The 
Mississippi was a boundary somewhat like 
Governor Bowdoin's whimsical all-surround- 
ing orb — we were confined within some lim- 
its. Now, by adding our unmeasured world 
beyond that river, we rush like a comet into 
infinite space. In our wild career we may 
jostle some other world out of its orbit ; but 
we shall, in every event, quench the light of 
our own" But the dangers foretold were 
not realised. Free States, as well as slave 
States, grew out of Louisiana. New Eng- 
land more than the south occupied the 



27 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

vacant western lands, and the wealth and 
prosperity of the great West has come to us 
by reason of this extension of our boundaries 
beyond the Mississippi. 

It has been remarked that Jefferson and 
some of his party leaders doubted the con- 
stitutional right of annexation. An amend- 
ment to the Constitution authorising it was 
prepared, but was never submitted to the 
States. The measure was acquiesced in as 
lying within the treaty powers of the Presi- 
dent and Senate, or being within the general 
powers of government, or perhaps as within 
the power of admitting new States to the 
Union. The party to which Jefferson be- 
longed was the party of a strict construction 
of the Constitution. It believed in limiting 
the powers of the general government as 
much as possible and still allow the govern- 
ment to exist. Yet at its first entrance into 
control it carried the sovereignty of the na- 
tional government as far as the Federalists 
had ever done. u The acquisition of Louisi- 
ana was an immense help in bringing about 
just that which 99 Jefferson and his party had 
opposed, " the subordination of the State to 
the Nation." That step was ratified by Con- 
gress, and stands as a precedent to-day. 

28 



LOUISIANA 

It was thus a matter of the gravest im- 
portance to us, irrespective of the material 
wealth it brought to the country, in its effect 
upon the question of the constitutional power 
of the United States to annex contiguous 
territory without the consent of the people 
of that territory. It is difficult to see, if our 
government has the power thus to annex 
contiguous territory, why it may not for the 
same reasons annex territory anywhere. The 
remoteness of a proposed acquisition, the 
character of its people, are questions which 
affect the desirability of annexation, and not 
the power, if the Louisiana precedent be 
accepted. 

Since the treaty with France provided that 
the inhabitants of Louisiana should be " in- 
corporated into the Union," or, in other 
words, that States should be formed out of 
it as soon as possible, according to the pro- 
visions of the Federal Constitution, this new 
acquisition, like the territories hitherto be- 
longing to the Union, was held under a trust, 
as it were, to form States when proper. Per- 
haps the Louisiana case goes no further as a 
precedent than that, under a construction of 
the Constitution adopted by the President 
and Congress and acquiesced in by the people 



29 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

(and, as we shall see, subsequently followed), 
the United States has the power to annex 
territory out of which States are to be 
formed. It fairly may be said that at that 
time the power of the United States under 
the Constitution to hold colonies or depend- 
encies which were not intended to be made 
into States, and ultimately to have a voice 
and a vote in our legislative assemblies and 
in the election of our national officers, was 
not considered. That may be said to have 
been left an open question. 



3° 



CHAPTER IV. 



FLORIDA. 

Florida presented some of the same 
aspects from the point of view of the United 
States as Louisiana. It was a province 
which had always seemed to furnish a base 
of operations against the peace and quietness 
of the people in the Southern States as well 
as a constant temptation to invasion. Spain 
was a weak power, and neither preserved 
order in Florida nor could protect it when 
citizens of the United States were the aggres- 
sors. Discovered by Spain in 15 13 and its 
first town built in 1565, she established only 
a few settlements within it ; and the greater 
part of its territory still remained occupied 
only by Indians until 1763, when Spain 
ceded it to England in exchange for Cuba 
which England had taken in the war just 
ended. It was assumed to extend from the 
Atlantic to the Mississippi, with the northern 
boundary unsettled. England divided it into 
East and West Florida, with the Appalachi- 
cola as the dividing line. When she made 
peace with the United States, in 1783, she 
also made a treaty with Spain by which 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

Florida was returned to its former owner. 
Then a good many settlers from the United 
States, who had gone there through English 
inducements while it was under English 
government, returned to this country. The 
northern boundary still remained unsettled 
until it was fixed by the treaty already men- 
tioned, in 1795, at a line running along the 
thirty-first parallel from the Mississippi to 
the Chattahoochee, then down that river to 
Flint River, and then across to the head 
waters of St. Mary's River. Very slowly 
and reluctantly Spain withdrew her forces 
south of that line. 

The United States began her serious en- 
croachments upon Florida in 18 10, when, 
taking advantage of an insurrection of West 
Florida against Spanish authority, the fed- 
eral government took possession of some of 
the principal posts west of the Perdido River, 
and soon after annexed the part on the east 
bank of the Mississippi to the territory of 
Orleans (the southern part of the Louisiana 
Purchase). The people of West Florida 
had proposed, when they revolted from Spain, 
to become annexed to the United States ; but 
our government seemed to prefer the course 
taken, leaving the title to negotiation. In 

3* 



FLORIDA 

spite of the treaty of 1795 fixing the northern 
boundary, the people on the United States 
side seemed to feel that they had a claim to 
the country west of the Perdido, relying upon 
the claim of France to that district when she 
held Louisiana. Above all, the action taken 
gave us land on both sides of the Mississippi. 
That may have been sufficient for the admin- 
istration. The next year Congress author- 
ised the acquisition of the entire province, 
if Spain would consent to it, or any other 
power tried to obtain it. 

Very soon another slice of this land occu- 
pied by the United States was added to the 
Mississippi Territory, and so matters re- 
mained as far as the federal government was 
concerned until 18 14. This occupation of 
West Florida gave rise to earnest debates in 
Congress \ but the country was too much 
occupied with commercial difficulties and 
strained relations with England and France 
to pay the attention to the matter which it 
deserved. It was another step in the de- 
velopment of the power of the national 
government. 

In 1 8 14, to prevent the British, then at 
war with the United States, from using 
Pensacola as a base of supplies, and having 

33 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

Spanish help in proposed operations against 
us in the South, Andrew Jackson, then a 
general in our army, marched against that 
city, and, defeating the British and Spanish 
defenders, took possession of it. A couple 
of days later, when the British were found 
to have left that section of the country, he 
restored the city to the Spanish. 

While Florida was a Spanish province, 
there were several cases of aggression on the 
part of our people in the South; but in 
1818 our government itself ordered an in- 
vasion, and retained possession for a time on 
the plea of restoring order. The state of 
affairs in the province was such as to invite 
trouble. Spain, upon regaining possession in 
1783, never fully reoccupied it. Only a few 
small military posts here and there nominally 
held in check a population made up in a 
great measure of outlaws, smugglers, and 
buccaneers, while the fierce and warlike 
Seminoles prevented the colonisation of 
many of the best sections. The American 
occupation, in 181 8, came about from the 
efforts of our government to disperse a band 
of filibusters, calling themselves patriots, who 
had landed on an island near the boundary 
of Georgia with the proclaimed intention of 



34 



FLORIDA 

invading East Florida and annexing it to 
the United States. Practically, their presence 
there hindered the execution of our revenue 
laws. Our troops took possession of the 
country to hold, as our government informed 
Spain, until that power was able to maintain 
order. 

Then difficulties with the Seminoles broke 
out. These Indians, living on both sides of 
the line between Florida and Georgia, had 
committed acts which led Georgia to com- 
plain to the government at Washington. 
General Jackson took the field against them, 
and pursued them into Florida. He himself 
had no doubt of the complicity of the Span- 
ish in these Indian outrages and of their fur- 
nishing supplies to the red men, and so he 
proceeded to take two or three Spanish forts 
in Florida and to occupy Pensacola again. 
This time he appointed a military governor, 
abolished Spanish revenue laws, and, in gen- 
eral, proceeded in a vigourous if high-handed 
course. Although these proceedings caused 
great excitement and considerable censure, 
Congress passed a vote of thanks to Jackson ; 
while the administration, after much hesita- 
tion, expressed its approbation of his acts. 
The people made an idol of him ; and this 



35 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

work in Florida, with his great victory over 
the British at New Orleans, fixed his popu- 
larity sufficiently secure to make him Presi- 
dent ten years or so later. 

Pensacola and our other captures in Flor- 
ida were subsequently returned to Spain ; and 
then, in 1819, Spain agreed to cede the whole 
province to us for five million dollars. The 
province had then only a very small popula- 
tion, with the whites clustered round a few 
settlements. The greater part was still 
roamed over by the native Indians. 

Before Spain would make this treaty, how- 
ever, she insisted upon defining the boundary 
between the Louisiana Purchase and Mexico, 
the latter then in her possession. The United 
States had made claims so far as the Rio 
Grande, while Spain allowed only a narrow 
strip west of the Mississippi. When the Sa- 
bine River was agreed upon as the boundary, 
she ceded Florida, as desired. In thus gain- 
ing Florida, we relinquished any claim we had 
upon what was afterwards the republic of 
Texas. 

Spain had her hands full at the time with 
the continuous revolutions in her South Amer- 
ican provinces and in Mexico, and perhaps 
she made this cession under a species of du- 

36 



FLORIDA 

ress. The acts of the United States officials, 
particularly those of General Jackson, which 
had been hailed with delight in the States, 
had not been such as to give Spain a feeling 
of security in the possession of Florida ; and 
she may have regarded the money as worth 
more to her, under the circumstances, than 
this doubtful possession. It was 1 821 before 
she ratified the treaty and withdrew her forces. 
General Jackson already had been appointed 
governor of the new territory ; and with his 
characteristic vigour and disregard of conse- 
quences he, in his own way, rather accele- 
rated the departure of the Spanish officials. 

The Florida question was thus settled. If 
the slave-owners of Southern Georgia and 
Alabama felt that now a refuge for their run- 
away property was closed, the Union as a 
whole could feel that one source of expense 
was stopped, — through its acquisition of a 
country which had been a constant danger to 
the South from the old colonial days. If 
Spain could not or would not maintain order 
there, our government could and would. 
This acquisition finished out the south-eastern 
portion of our domain, and carried our coast 
line unbroken from Maine to Louisiana. 

Little question about the constitutional 

37 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

power of our government to make this an- 
nexation was raised. The precedent of 
Louisiana was followed, and made stronger 
by being followed. As in the case of Loui- 
siana, the consent of the inhabitants of the 
ceded territory was not asked. As in that 
case, it was an act in which the benefit to the 
United States only was considered ; and ar- 
rangements were made with sovereign power, 
not with the people governed. The inhabi- 
tants of the new territory, as we have seen, 
were not a particularly desirable class ; yet, as 
in Louisiana, there was every expectation 
that in time it would develop to a position 
when it could be properly admitted to the 
Union as a State, as eventually it was. 

The annexation of Louisiana and Florida 
did away with troublesome neighbours, pre- 
vented further certain irritation and perhaps 
war. Their acquisition was justified by the 
circumstances of the times and events ; and, 
however much such additions to the southern 
part of the country may have helped that sec- 
tion and given its peculiar institution added 
strength, they were also of great benefit to 
the country at large. Whatever motives 
were by the opposition attributed to the ad- 
ministrations which secured these additions, 



38 



FLORIDA 

certainly such sectional aggrandisement was 
not alleged by the people favouring them as 
the motive ; and there is no evidence to war- 
rant the belief that it actuated those most 
concerned. That the annexation of Louisi- 
ana and Florida dried up the sources of 
chronic difficulties is reason enough for the 
treaties with France and Spain. As to the 
particular benefit to the South of the acquisi- 
tion of Florida, outside of its addition as one 
more southern State, the most that can be 
said is that it helped the slave States by shut- 
ting up what had hitherto been an open door 
of escape for the slave. And as to Louisiana, 
if its acquisition did add to the slave-owning 
States, it also opened the Mississippi to the 
North, and in so doing made the free States of 
the Northwest the richer and more powerful. 

We come now to annexation, which hardly 
can stand careful scrutiny as to motives and 
methods, however beneficial the results may 
have been. Before, however, treating Texas 
and the Mexican cession, it will be more 
convenient to consider the Oregon country. 



39 



CHAPTER V. 



OREGON. 

» Oregon is the one addition to our domain 
which has come to us by discovery and oc- 
cupation, but even then a treaty with Great 
Britain was required to make the title secure 
without possible bloodshed. Oregon also 
reminds us that we are a young country in 
the New World, for it is since the United 
States came into existence that white men 
explored the great river flowing through that 
territory and settled on Oregon soil. 

It was the fur trade which first led us to 
the northwest, and it was the success of the 
French and the English in the north which 
stimulated the early interest in Oregon. As 
Irving has written : " While the fiery and 
magnificent Spaniard, inflamed with the mania 
for gold, has extended his discoveries and 
conquests over those brilliant countries 
scorched by the ardent sun of the tropics, 
the ardent and buoyant Frenchman and the 
cool and calculating Briton have pursued the 
less splendid but no less lucrative traffic in 
furs amidst the hyperborean regions of the 
Canadas, until they have advanced even 

40 



OREGON 

within the arctic circle." The spirit which 
led " the cool and calculating Briton " into 
the north also caused him to cast his eyes 
toward the shores of the Pacific, while 
already his American cousin was trading for 
otter skins along that coast and carrying 
them to China for a market. With the 
Americans in their trading vessels on the 
Pacific coast, and the English working in 
that direction through the interior from the 
East, a struggle for the possession of this 
territory lying between Russian Alaska and 
Spanish California became inevitable. It 
was the trapper and the fur-trader who were 
to be the pioneers. While we would not 
undervalue the courage and resolution of the 
intrepid explorers, we should also give due 
meed of praise to the trappers and fur-traders 
who first endured the hardships and dangers 
of frontier life in Oregon. It was their 
work which carried the country's western 
boundary to the Pacific. They it was who 
led the way for the settlers who came after 
them. It was a repetition within the life of 
our nation of to-day of the trials and strug- 
gles and final success of the colonists of 
Massachusetts and Virginia on the Atlantic 
coast. 



41 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

In 1792 Captain Gray of the ship 
" Columbia," of Boston, entered the Colum- 
bia River, and gave it the name of his vessel. 
He commanded one of those traders engaged 
in the fur trade along the northwest coast 
from California to the high northern lati- 
tudes. The coast of Oregon had been ^een 
by many navigators before, and a large river 
was known to be in that vicinity ; but he 
seems to have been the first white man who 
ever sailed into that river and made any 
exploration of it. He did not go very far 
up; but, as he sailed away, he met Van- 
couver, and, telling him of his discovery, left 
his charts with him. Thereupon Vancouver 
explored the river for a long distance from 
its mouth. 

Captain Gray's report of his exploration 
upon his return home was so favourable that 
a desire to secure the country for the Union 
at once sprang up. Early in 1803 President 
Jefferson sent a confidential message to 
Congress, asking for an appropriation for 
an exploring expedition to the West. The 
appropriation was granted, and the President 
designated as leader of the proposed expedi- 
tion Captain Meriwether Lewis. With 
him, as associate, was Lieutenant William 



42 



OREGON 

Clark, a brother of that George Rogers 
Clark who had so wonderfully conquered 
the British in the Northwestern Territory 
in the Revolution. 

Jefferson had for many years shown a 
deep interest in a proper scientific and geo- 
graphical exploration of the great country 
west of the Alleghanies ; and now, with the 
possible acquisition of Louisiana, and his 
desire for a larger knowledge of Oregon and 
to insure its possession by this country, he 
initiated this movement which resulted in 
Lewis and Clark's expedition. By the time 
they were ready to start, in 1804, Louisiana 
was ours, and their route lay all the way in 
the territory of the United States. 

Lewis and Clark set out, in 1804, from 
the mouth of the Missouri, and sailed up the 
river to its sources in the Rocky Mountains, 
crossed the mountains to the left branch of 
the Columbia, and followed down that river 
to its mouth where Captain Gray had 
anchored over twelve years before. Then 
they returned home the way that they had 
come. They had passed through a country 
almost unknown to white men, had escaped 
the dangers of Indians, of snow and ice and 
the mountains, and the perils of unknown 



43 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

rivers, and had brought back valuable infor- 
mation, besides adding another link in the 
chain of our title to Oregon. They were 
gone something over two years, and richly 
deserved the President's eulogy given in his 
message to Congress in 1806. Their story is 
full of adventure, and has a charm of its own 
quite aside from the importance of their work. 

In 18 10, encouraged by Jefferson, John 
Jacob Astor formed the Pacific Fur Com- 
pany, with the object of making a settlement 
on the Columbia and developing the trade 
of that region. The company founded 
Astoria, and made a beginning of its work. 
It established a few posts along the river, 
and then was swallowed up by the North- 
west Fur Company, its English rival in the 
field. The enterprise was not successful 
from a business point of view. When the 
War of 18 12 broke out, Astoria and the 
company's goods there and at its posts were 
transferred to the English company, osten- 
sibly to prevent their capture and confiscation 
by English troops. The evidence goes to 
show, however, that Astor's far-reaching and 
far-sighted as well as patriotic enterprise 
was ruined by an unfortunate selection of 
partners and the lack of support from our 



44 



OREGON 

government. Still, the settlement at Astoria 
and the operations of the Pacific Fur Com- 
pany were further steps and important ones 
in our occupation of Oregon. 

After the War of 1812, in spite of a law 
passed by Congress forbidding British fur- 
traders to carry on their business upon our 
territory, the Northwest Fur Company con- 
tinued to monopolise the trade, holding as 
it did posts all along the Columbia and its 
branches. But our people had sufficient in- 
terest in the matter to claim the whole of 
the country as far north as the parallel of 
54 40', the southern limit of the Russian 
possessions in America. England, relying 
upon her occupation and alleged discovery, 
also claimed the territory ; and, to settle the 
matter temporarily, an arrangement was made 
in 1 8 18 for a joint occupation for the term 
of ten years, the people of each nation being 
thus authorised to trade within and occupy 
it. This agreement was renewed in 1827 to 
extend indefinitely, provided that either party 
might, after 1828, revoke it upon twelve 
months' notice. 

Any possible difficulty with Russia, who 
owned what is now Alaska and who had es- 
tablished sundry trading posts in California, 

45 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

was obviated by a treaty with her in 1824 
by which she abandoned all claim to the Pa- 
cific coast south of 54 40% the southern 
limit of Alaska ; while Spain, at the time 
she ceded Florida to the United States, also 
released all claims to the Pacific coast north 
of 42 °, the northern boundary of California. 

The arrangement with England did very 
well for a time; but in 1842 the "Oregon 
question," which for twenty years u had been 
more or less before the eyes and in the 
thoughts of statesmen at home and abroad," 
received public notice in a President's mes- 
sage. President Tyler, in his message to 
Congress on Dec. 5, 1842, said: "The 
territory of the United States, commonly 
called the Oregon Territory, lying on the Pa- 
cific Ocean, north of the forty-second degree 
of latitude, to a portion of which Great Brit- 
ain lays claim, begins to attract the attention 
of our fellow-citizens ; and the tide of popu- 
lation, which has reclaimed what was so 
lately an unbroken wilderness in more con- 
tiguous regions, is preparing to flow over 
these vast districts which stretch from the 
Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. In 
the advance of the requirement of individual 
rights in these lands, sound policy dictates 

46 



OREGON 

that every effort should be resorted to by the 
two governments to settle their respective 
claims." The Senate thereupon passed a 
bill, by a majority of one, for taking possession 
of the whole of the disputed territory, the title 
of the United States to which it was declared 
to be certain, and would not be abandoned. 
The House, however, refused to concur. 
The question then became a political one, 
with allj the inflammatory appeals to national 
jealousy, pride, and interest which naturally 
might be expected under such circumstances. 

When the Presidential election came round 
in 1844, it was one of the issues upon which 
Polk was elected. The cry was, " Fifty-four- 
forty or fight." If the Texas question was 
the main issue, the Oregon question added to 
the excitement of the times. Congressmen 
made fiery speeches, and the country seemed 
on the verge of another struggle with Great 
Britain, when wiser counsels prevailed ; and in 
1846 a convention was made by the two 
countries, which settled the difficulty. Mon- 
roe and Tyler had suggested a dividing line ; 
and Polk, although elected with the under- 
standing that he should insist upon 54 40', 
made an offer of compromise ; but it was not 
until matters had reached an acute stage that 



47 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

negotiations finally were concluded. It is 
barely possible that the Mexican difficulty 
rather urged Polk to a settlement with Eng- 
land ; and it is to the credit of Daniel Web- 
ster that, although at that time he held no 
office in the executive department of the gov- 
ernment, he still exerted his influence in pri- 
vate channels abroad to bring about a peaceful 
solution of the problem. 

The convention made the parallel of 49 ° 
the northern boundary of Oregon, while 
Vancouver's Island was given to England. 
Free navigation of Fuca's Straits and the 
Columbia River was given to both nations, 
and rights of actual possession of land on 
both sides of the boundary line were to be 
respected by both. It was a natural boun- 
dary line, since it continued our northern 
boundary line directly across to the Pacific. 

Thus this bone of contention between 
England and the United States was re- 
moved, — a contention which was aggra- 
vated by the efforts of a British company to 
monopolise a trade which the people of the 
United States felt should be theirs by right 
of prior occupation as well as discovery, 
and possibly under our construction of the 
Louisiana Purchase. 



48 



OREGON 

This Oregon Territory is now occupied 
by the States of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, 
and parts of Montana and Wyoming. The 
Pacific coast line soon was extended south 
by the acquisition of California. So within 
fifty years our domain had grown from a 
relatively small district, confined within the 
Atlantic and the Mississippi, to a country 
extending from ocean to ocean. The steps 
which led to the acquisition of Texas and 
the Mexican territory already were being 
taken when Oregon became unquestionably 
our own. 



49 



CHAPTER VI. 



TEXAS. 

The annexation of Texas and the ac- 
quisition of Mexican territory adjoining it, 
including California, must be considered 
together; for they are really parts of one 
transaction. The acquisition of all this new 
territory was caused, not by extra-territorial 
difficulties, as in the case of Louisiana and 
Florida, but by a desire on the part of a 
portion of the country to increase its area. 
Although all our additions of territory thus 
far, except the Oregon Territory, had been at 
the South, at least the populous portion of 
them, and in the opinion of many public 
men gave that section so great a prepond- 
erance of influence as to endanger the Union, 
the demand for still further additions came 
from that same section. Slavery, and a 
desire to keep southern influence predomi- 
nant in the government, were primary causes 
of the great additions of territory in 1845 
and 1848. As the free North grew in 
strength, the South began to fear that, if it 
became strong enough to control the govern- 
ment, it would restrict and finally abolish 

5° 



TEXAS 

slavery altogether. The Missouri Compro- 
mise left only a small space for slave States ; 
while north of 36 ° 20' was an immense 
territory rapidly filling up with a population 
from New England and the North, out of 
which States would rise, free by the inherited 
principles of the settlers, and by law if the 
Missouri Compromise were respected. In 
other words, it took no prophet's eye to see 
a time rapidly approaching when the slave 
States would be in a decided minority. And 
just at this time a spirit of reform was 
rampant. It was the age of isms in New 
England. Prison reform, reforms in crimi- 
nal law, and poor laws were agitated and 
undertaken ; while aggressively advocated was 
the abolition of slavery. A period of intel- 
lectual growth and moral growth was begin- 
ning. With the denunciation of slavery per 
se^ there was also a crusade begun against 
slavery at the South on the part of the more 
radical reformers. Societies for the abolition 
of slavery were found at the South previous 
to 1835; but, after that time, that section 
ranged itself against them, and the abolition- 
ists were driven to the North. That party, 
small but earnest, would give no rest to 
agitation, and preferred a divided country to 

5 1 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

allowing slavery protected under their flag. 
With this feeling springing up against 
slavery, — a moral feeling all the stronger 
from rising among a people whose very begin- 
ning was a moral struggle, — it is not strange 
if those at the South who believed slavery 
necessary to its prosperity, felt that sooner 
or later would come the demand for freedom 
for the slaves, with all its serious conse- 
quences to that section of the country. 
And, further, the South was in danger of 
losing the predominance which it had held 
always in the affairs of the Union ; and that, 
especially to a State like South Carolina, was 
a situation not to be borne. To preserve 
the balance between slave and free States, 
more territory south of 36 ° 20' must be 
gained. Such land was at hand in Texas. 

Texas was part of that vast region in 
North America claimed by Spain by virtue 
of discovery and occupation, and was consid- 
ered a part of Mexico. Spanish occupation 
of Texas was very limited at any time ; for it 
was in Mexico as it is to-day, and to the 
north-west of Texas, that Spain made any vis- 
ible progress. Before an English settler had 
arrived in America, little armies under Span- 
ish leaders had penetrated into what is now 



5 2 



TEXAS 



New Mexico and Colorado. So early as 
1600 the Spanish Jesuits were exploring and 
establishing their missions in the more north- 
erly and central part of the region now in- 
cluded in New Mexico and Arizona. Con- 
siderable success followed their efforts to 
Christianise the natives, a rapid emigration set 
in, and that district became quite flourishing. 
It was the reports of mineral wealth which 
drew these early Spanish adventurers to the 
wilderness. Spain always was seeking a new 
El Dorado, and her early expeditions to the 
North were to find another Mexico. With 
the soldier and the priest went the gold-hunter 
and the adventurer. But the Spaniard soon 
became a taskmaster. He reduced the Ind- 
ians, those whom he had converted as well 
as others when he could, to a slavery too 
cruel to be borne. At last, about 1680, the 
natives broke into open revolt, and swept the 
Spanish from the country. Spain did not re- 
gain possession until eighteen years afterward. 

About that time the Jesuits explored and 
planted missions in the country south of the 
Gila River. They Christianised the natives 
and reported the great mineral wealth there ; 
and a large emigration from the South set in, 
so that a century and a quarter ago that dis- 



53 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

trict was a thriving Spanish province. But, 
as usual, the Spanish enslaved the Indians ; 
and, as had happened earlier, north of them, 
the slaves revolted, and killed or drove their 
masters from the country. Then civilisation 
in that section disappeared, and in 1846 only a 
few Mexicans remained in the old town of 
Tucson and along the Mesilla Valley. 

There was less of Spanish occupation of 
Texas than of the other Spanish possessions 
north of Mexico. The French unwittingly 
made a beginning there when La Salle landed 
at Matagorda Bay instead of the mouth of 
the Mississippi, as he wished ; and, after some 
other ineffectual attempts to establish French 
settlements, a French colony from the Red 
River located in Texas, and were allowed by 
the Spanish to stay there. But Spain claimed 
the province as part of Mexico, and practi- 
cally made good her claim. When the United 
States bought Louisiana, only the moderation 
of Jefferson and the prudence of the military 
commanders prevented a collision of armed 
troops over the matter of the boundary be- 
tween Mexico and this country. In 18 19, 
however, as we have seen, the United States 
withdrew all claims which she had to Texas 
as a part of Louisiana, by the treaty fixing the 
Sabine River as the boundary. 



54- 



TEXAS 

Soon after the acquisition of Louisiana 
there sprang up an illicit trade with Mexico, 
through Texas, which was so lucrative that a 
large number of adventurers engaged in it. 
When the difficulties between Spain and her 
American colonies reached a point where re- 
bellions became frequent, these adventurers, 
assisted by friends within the United States, 
made numerous attempts to free Texas and 
Mexico from Spanish rule ; but Texan inde- 
pendence did not come from these efforts. 
The feeling which inspired these filibustering 
expeditions was doubtless one factor in causing 
the dissatisfaction displayed in the South and 
Southwest over the fixing of the eastern 
boundary of Texas in 1819. Henry Clay 
and other prominent men who approved that 
feature of the treaty expressed only a popular 
sentiment in their sections of the country. 



55 



CHAPTER VII. 



TEXAS (Concluded). 

Mexico in the mean time had been fighting 
for independence, and in 1821 began a revo- 
lution which ended in her freedom from 
Spain. During these struggles Texas lost 
her population, which had been of a floating 
character, so that by 1822 she was almost 
wholly deserted. In the next year, however, 
Stephen F. Austin received from the new 
nation of Mexico the confirmation of a grant 
of lands in Texas made by Spain in 1820 to 
his father, Moses Austin. Already Stephen 
had conducted a considerable number of col- 
onists to a site near where the city of Austin 
now is, and more soon followed. The father 
was a native of Connecticut, but a resident 
of Missouri when he received his grant and 
began the enterprise. It was naturally the 
principles of Missouri and of the South which 
governed the early settlers. It is hardly fair 
to call them merely adventurers because they 
practically carried slavery with them, or to 
confuse them with their predecessors in the 
contraband trade which flourished there before 
them. Their sympathy was with slavery, 

56 



TEXAS 



and probably with them were many doubtful 
characters ; but there is little in their early 
history which shows them other than a set of 
men trying to better themselves in a new 
country. Later there came among them 
those whose object may have been simply to 
add to the power of the South and strengthen 
its institution of slavery by annexing the dis- 
trict to the United States. The South, in 
truth, favoured the colonisation of Texas, 
and there is good evidence of a scheme to 
colonise it and annex it to this country ; but 
such a scheme was necessarily very general 
in its nature, — rather a strong desire than a 
well-defined plan. We can hardly believe 
that the settlement of the .territory depended 
entirely upon the so-called conspiracy to 
colonise and annex it as an additional slave 
State. Yet, whatever part the slaveholding 
interest may have had in its settlement, there 
is no iioubt that very soon after it began to 
grow there was a sufficiently definite purpose 
at the South to free it from Mexican author- 
ity, and then, if possible, to annex it to the 
United States. The South would not will- 
ingly allow this territory to become free from 
slavery, as it would if it remained Mexican, 
or should come under English protection 



57 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

or dominion, as at one time was thought 
possible. 

When the Mexican constitution was 
adopted, in 1824, Texas was united with 
Coahuila, hitherto a separate province and 
one wholly Mexican, and a Mexican was 
placed as commandant over the department. 
The injustice displayed by this commandant 
created difficulties; but the adoption of a 
more liberal policy on the part of Mexico 
smoothed out the trouble for a few years, 
and Texas prospered. 

Mexico, however, as we remember, was 
in a chronic state of revolution by that time ; 
and in 1830 her government, then in the 
hands of a dictator, forbade any people from 
the United States entering Texas as colonists, 
and suspended all colony contracts which 
might interfere with the prohibition. From 
this time forward Mexican jealousy against 
emigrants from the United States became 
every month more manifest. Moreover, 
reckless adventurers united with the Mexican 
government, and went farther than it did in 
acts of oppression and outrage upon the 
colonists. 

One cause of this jealousy is apparent 
s enough. Texas was almost wholly Ameri- 

58 



TEXAS 

can in population, and hardly could escape 
the prejudice of Mexican authorities. Then, 
too, many of the people of the United States 
felt, and expressed the feeling, that our gov- 
ernment was all wrong in agreeing to the 
Sabine as the boundary with Mexico; and 
that we ought to have kept the whole of 
Texas, as it rightly, so they said, went with 
I Louisiana. In fact, the United States tried - 
twice in vain to buy Texas from Mexico, 
once under John Quincy Adams and again 
under Jackson. However unreasonable the 
views above quoted may have been, they had 
their weight at the South, especially since 
Texas was filling up with people going from 
our country, leaving friends and families be- 
hind, and also since Texas within our bounds 
would be added slave territory. Mexico had 
abolished slavery, and this meant that Texas 
would be a free country should it remain 
under her sovereignty. Mexico knew these 
facts. She knew that the citizens of Texas 
were aliens to Spanish or Mexican blood, 
and she must have felt that the bond which 
held that State to her was weakening every 
day. So in defence she took a step which, 
however ill-advised and unjust it may seem 
to us now, seemed wise to her then. 



59 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

By 1833, the situation having become un- 
bearable, the American settlers, who now 
numbered 20,000, held a convention, and 
determined to separate from Coahuila. A 
State constitution was constructed, and an 
address to the Mexican government prepared 
requesting admission to the republic as a 
separate State, and this at a time when 
Mexico herself, or the party in power there, 
was making the country a consolidated re- 
public rather than a federation of States. 
About this time the Mexicans in Coahuila 
and Texas quarrelled, and each set up a 
different revolutionary government; but the 
Americans had no part in this movement. 
Austin went to Mexico as the agent of 
Texas, with the constitution and address, 
but could get no definite satisfaction. Santa 
Anna, who was then at the head of the 
government and wanted no separate States 
under him, simply played with Austin, keep- 
ing him in Mexico by promises of attention 
and of allowing the separate State govern- 
ment desired until he himself could get ready 
to march to Texas at the head of an army. 
Austin did succeed in getting the prohibition 
of immigration from the United States re- 
moved, and the granting of some other favour- 

60 



TEXAS 

able measures ; but that was all. At length 
he returned to Texas with the belief that 
only by force could anything like indepen- 
dence be gained for it, and that war was at 
hand. 

In 1835, upon the report of the approach 
of Mexican troops, the State legislature, 
which had been guilty of gross frauds, was 
l broken up and the country left without a 
government. The people were thus obliged 
either to submit to Santa Anna, in effect 
a dictator who already had deceived them, 
or form a government of their own. Being 
at least American born, they did not hesitate. 
Committees of Safety were formed, and then 
a provisional government ; and, after a few 
skirmishes and battles with the Mexican 
troops, the latter were driven from the 
country. That winter a Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was issued; and on March 17, 
1836, a convention of delegates adopted a 
constitution and elected officers. When 
Santa Anna heard of the defeat of the troops 
sent the year before, he himself set out for 
Texas at the head of an army of 7,500 men. 
The treacherous massacre at Goliad and the 
slaughter at the Alamo committed by him 
and his troops created a panic for a time ; 

61 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

but General Houston, the Texan com- 
mander-in-chief, drew the Mexican leader 
after him by a series of retreats until he 
reached San Jacinto. There Santa Anna's 
forces became divided, and Houston fell 
upon him, utterly routed his army, and took 
him prisoner. This ended the war, although 
neither then nor thereafter did Mexico ac- 
knowledge the independence of Texas. 
That new republic proposed annexation to 
the United States, but the latter was not 
then ready for it. Yet the sympathy of the 
American people was with the Texans in 
their struggle. The bloody deeds at Alamo 
and Goliad furnished ghastly incentives for 
such a feeling, and it had been shown prac- 
tically by the considerable body of troops 
raised in the States in their aid. With all 
this sympathy, however, there was a convic- 
tion, especially at the North, that the South 
had a selfish interest in the matter. 

The independence of Texas was recog- 
nised by the United States in 1837, while 
Mexico protested against the actions of its 
people. She continued to maintain a hostile 
attitude toward her revolted State, and sought 
to incite Indian forays ; but she never sent 
another soldier against it except on one or 

62 



TEXAS 

two marauding expeditions. In 1840 Eng- 
land, France and Belgium also recognised 
the independence of Texas, and the new 
republic began to grow rapidly. In 1843 
England remonstrated against Mexico's con- 
duct toward it ; and, as a result, commission- 
ers for an armistice were appointed. While 
negotiations were pending President Tyler 
made propositions for annexation to the 
United States. Texas took a little time to 
consider, but finally approved the project ; and 
a treaty of annexation was made. Anxious 
as Tyler was to put this through, he could not 
carry the Senate with him ; and the treaty 
was rejected June 8, 1844. This treaty 
irritated Mexico, and she broke off her 
negotiations, and threatened a renewal of 
hostilities. It displeased England and France, 
who wanted to see Texas under an English 
or joint protectorate, without slavery and free 
from the influence of the United States; 
while its rejection humiliated Texas. But 
Tyler's time came only a little later. 
Meanwhile Texas found herself burdened 
with debt ; but her population was increas- 
ing, and by 1844 her revenues began to 
increase, so that she seemed to be on the 
road to prosperity. 

63 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

That year the United States elections had 
resulted in the choice of Polk for President 
on a platform favoring annexation. Accord- 
ingly, in the spring of 1845 joint resolutions 
for annexation were passed through Congress 
by small majorities, were at once approved by 
President Tyler just before his term expired, 
and in July were ratified by a Texan conven- 
tion called for this purpose. The population 
of the new State at this time was about 
150,000. 

Although nine years had passed since San 
Jacinto, and although Mexico never since 
had sent an army against Texas to compel 
submission to her, she still refused to ac- 
knowledge the independence of her former 
State. The action of the United States she 
considered an act of war against her, and 
her minister left Washington ; but actual 
hostilities between the two countries did not 
begin at once. When they did break out, it 
was nominally for other reasons, as we shall 
see. 

The annexation of Texas, in the light of 
her history, can hardly be condemned per se. 
It was bound to come at some time. Her 
people, as has been remarked, were mostly 
Americans who had come in there. All their 



64 



TEXAS 



political ideas were American. They were 
of what we may call, for the sake of a 
name, the Anglo-Saxon race; while the Mexi- 
cans were of another stock. They could 
have no sympathy with Mexican ideas and 
politics. It was natural for them to turn 
to us, as it was natural for us to sympathise 
with them. Their only tie to Mexico was 
political. Texas was everything she should 
not be to make Mexican sovereignty suitable 
or acceptable. The objection to annexation 
lay in the time of the act and the surround- 
ing circumstances. It meant, in all prob- 
ability and apparently designedly, a war with 
Mexico which had been at peace with us. 
It was a direct act of aggression, however 
extenuating the failure of Mexico to recon- 
quer the revolted district may have been. 
The object appeared to many to be not to 
help a people near of kin to us and our 
institutions, but through a war of conquest 
to acquire territory to be devoted to slavery. 
Mexico's possession meant freedom for the 
negro, while ours meant slavery. As Henry 
Clay writes in December, 1844, " The Whigs 
were most anxious to avoid a foreign war 
for the sake of acquiring a foreign territory, 
which, under the circumstances of the ac- 



65 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

quisition, could not fail to produce domestic 
discord and expose the character of the 
country, in the eyes of an impartial world, 
to severe animadversion." 



66 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE MEXICAN CESSION. 

Although the Mexican government an- 
nounced that it would maintain its right to 
Texas by force of arms, and all attempts at 
diplomatic arrangement failed, no outbreak 
of hostilities occurred until the next year. 
It seems very much as if the United States 
were bent on war, and a war of conquest at 
that. She took the quarrel of Texas di- 
rectly upon her own shoulders. Besides 
committing an act of war against Mexico by 
annexing Texas, she also by so doing, in- 
volved herself in a dispute over the boundary 
of that State, and pushed her claims to the 
utmost limit. Mexico claimed the river 
Nueces as the western limit, while the 
United States claimed the land to the Rio 
Grande. By carrying the boundary to that 
river, we really annexed a large strip of ter- 
ritory on which neither an American nor 
Texan had made a single settlement, and 
which included a part of the Mexican State 
of New Mexico. Texas grew in size very 
rapidly from the time she was a part of 
Mexico to the time of her annexation to the 
United States. 



67 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

When Texas agreed to the annexation, 
" the President was requested and authorised 
to lose no time in establishing a line of fron- 
tier posts and occupying any exposed portion 
along the western border of the new State," 
and General Taylor was sent to Texas with 
an army of occupation. He halted in a posi- 
tion north of the Nueces River, and hoisted 
the American flag. Early in 1846 he was 
ordered to the Rio Grande \ and, when he 
crossed the Nueces to carry out his orders, 
he entered the disputed territory. This was 
looked upon by Mexico as a still further in- 
vasion of her land, — even if she had given 
up Texas, which she had not, — and a force 
of Mexican dragoons attacked a small body 
of our men. This was enough for President 
Polk and the party in power. We remem- 
ber that Jefferson had not been so hasty 
forty years before. On May 11, 1846, 
war was declared ; and the unequal struggle 
began. Unequal because the Mexican ar- 
mies, no matter how much they might out- 
number ours, no matter that they were 
fighting for their own country, in sight of 
their own homes, were always beaten. Un- 
equal especially, because the government be- 
hind them was weak, distracted by constant 

68 



THE MEXICAN CESSION 

rebellions, a mere shadow. To add to Mex- 
ico's difficulties, our government practically 
stirred up a revolution in Mexican govern- 
ment, in the midst of the war, by opening a 
way for Santa Anna — who had been driven 
into exile before the war began — to return 
to Mexico, and really inducing him to do so. 
It was doubtless calculated that Mexico, em- 
broiled afresh in domestic difficulties, would 
be a still easier prey for the United States, 
and that Santa Anna, in return, would favour 
the ultimate designs of this country. But he 
disappointed these expectations. Probably 
he found that a vigourous resistance to Amer- 
ican aggression was the surest road to popu- 
larity ; and, when he got to Mexico and 
seized the reins of power, our advance 
was more vigourously contested than before. 
Benton, in his " Thirty Years' View," thus 
characterises these intrigues : — 

" What must history say of the policy and 
morality of such doings ? The butcher of 
American prisoners at Goliad, San Patricio, 
the Old Mission, and the Alamo; the de- 
stroyer of republican government at home; 
the military dictator, aspiring to permanent 
supreme power, — this man to be restored to 
power by the United States, for the purpose 

69 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

of fulfilling speculations and indemnity cal- 
culations on which the war was begun ! " 

The United States very early made propo- 
sitions of peace. Nothing came of them, so 
far as Mexico was concerned ; but here a col- 
lateral question was raised, which lasted so 
long as the cause of that war. A bill was 
introduced into Congress to authorise the 
President to use three million dollars as he 
deemed it expedient in negotiating a treaty 
of peace with Mexico. To this an amend- 
ment was offered, known as the Wilmot 
Proviso, prohibiting slavery in any territory 
to be acquired under that treaty or in any 
way whatsoever. The bill, with the proviso, 
passed the House, but did not reach the 
Senate in time to pass that session. It was 
the beginning of the end of slavery. That 
proviso was notice that a large and increas- 
ing number of the people were opposed to any 
further extension of slavery. " It announced a 
policy which was afterward to be victorious." 

The war went on until General Scott en- 
tered the City of Mexico. That settled the 
contest. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 
concluded Feb. 2, 1848, defined the terms 
of peace; and the war was ended. As a 
result, besides confirming our title to Texas, 

70 



THE MEXICAN CESSION 

Mexico ceded to the United States Califor- 
nia and all the country between that district 
and Texas which we own to-day except a 
little strip ceded to us in 1853. The same 
stipulation in regard to the people of the 
country ceded was incorporated in the treaty, 
as in the case of Louisiana, except that the 
provision was added that Congress should be 
the sole judge of the propriety of the admis- 
sion of new States formed from the new 
territory. Practically, the United States 
agreed to form States from that territory so 
soon as Congress deemed it proper to do so. 
The United States paid Mexico #15,000,000, 
and released her from claims of American 
citizens to an amount of #3,250,000, and 
also agreed to protect her northern boundary 
from the incursions and misconduct of the 
Indians. The war cost us in round num- 
bers #150,000,000, and, it is said, 25,000 
lives, counting the deaths which resulted in 
every way from it. 

The glory of the Mexican War rests upon 
the army alone, and the common soldier is 
entitled to the most of it. The bravery 
shown by him, the dogged courage and per- 
sistent effort and intelligence, were the same 
as have characterised the American soldier 

71 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

from the first, and are still shown by him 
to-day. His general who led the way to 
Mexico became the next President ; while 
the party which was responsible for the war 
— which had made the annexation of Texas 
a party principle — was utterly defeated when 
next the people went to the polls. 

There seemed to be a prospect of further 
trouble with Mexico in 1853, but t ' le Gads- 
den treaty settled the matter by annexing to 
the United States some 30,000 square miles 
along the southern bank of the Gila River. 
This territory forms the southern part of 
what is now New Mexico and Arizona. 
The difficulty all arose over a disputed 
boundary. The boundary commissioners set 
off the Mesilla Valley as belonging to Mex- 
ico, whereupon our governor of New Mex- 
ico objected, claiming that they were in 
error, and proceeded to take possession of 
the disputed territory until the boundary 
could be settled by the United States and 
Mexico. Mexico protested ; and, since 
Santa Anna was at the head of the govern- 
ment and unfriendly to us, matters looked 
somewhat stormy. But a settlement was 
effected by which this strip was ceded to the 
United States, and the latter released from 



72 



THE MEXICAN CESSION 



the obligation to protect Mexico's northern 
boundary from the Indians. In return the 
United States paid Mexico $10,000,000. 

This acquisition from Mexico marks our 
last acquisition of contiguous territory. The 
annexation of Texas and the land ceded to 
us by Mexico contained nearly a million 
square miles in territory, but outside of 
Texas very sparsely inhabited, very much 
of it almost unknown. California began to 
grow with the discovery of its gold mines 
after its acquisition by us. For the purpose 
for which the war was undertaken the results 
seem to answer; and yet, in spite of any 
material advantage gained, the Texan and 
Mexican business is hardly to our credit. It 
was very much like the case of a powerful 
neighbour taking a piece of land he wanted 
from a weaker neighbour, and paying for it 
what he pleased. Yet the results even in 
a moral and political point of view were not 
wholly undesirable. The Mexican War and 
the annexation of Texas marked the extreme 
power of the slave-holding interest at the 
South, and the exercise of that power solidi- 
fied the opposition North and West. The 
institution of slavery, although it seemed at 
the time to be reinvigorated, really received 



73 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

its death-blow then ; any seeming advance 
which it made then or thereafter was at the 
expense of a support which it required to 
exist. Texas was the last slave State to be 
admitted to the Union. "What the Aboli- 
tionists could not do, the slaveholders and 
their adherents did by opening the eyes of 
the people and showing them how near they 
were to the brink of the precipice." 

The same impulses which drove this coun- 
try in its course with Mexico were active for 
some time afterward in efforts to gain 
additional territory at the South. These 
efforts lasted until the Civil War ended sla- 
very ; but private attempts to acquire some 
of the West Indies or parts of Central 
America, during that time, ended in disaster 
and failure, and official intrigues fared no 
better. Then came the Civil War, as a 
consequence of the disease in our system 
which led to the Mexican War ; and we 
were too busy in trying to build up a new 
government or saving the Union to think of 
annexing foreign lands. 



74 



CHAPTER IX. 



ALASKA. 

After the Civil War we bought Alaska. 
Up to this point, in the history of our acquisi- 
tions, we have found that political necessities 
or advantages, actual or alleged, have been 
the reasons for annexation. In the case of * 
Alaska it was mainly financial or commer- 
cial reasons. Alaska was a country which 
did not touch our boundaries at any point. 
Although sparsely inhabited except by the 
natives, from its geographical location and 
its climate it offered no inducements for a 
large emigration of our people or of Euro- 
peans. In other words, while every other 
addition to our territory would, in the ordi- 
nary course of growth, become States, this 
Alaska purchase w offered little or no pros- 
pect of ever becoming fit for admission to 
the Union on an equal footing with the 
States." And it is questionable whether the 
recent discovery of gold will make any mate- 
rial change in the permanent condition of 
things in that respect. 

In annexing Alaska, the United States took 
another step in the direction of acquiring any 

75 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

territory, wherever situated, the only ques- 
tion being as to the benefit to be derived 
from the step. To be sure, the Civil War, 
just ended, had made the executive and 
Congress high-handed. It had stretched ex- 
ecutive power and the federal power to an 
extreme limit. Its effect had been to cen- 
tralise power in the federal government ; and, 
with Louisiana and Texas in its memory, 
the latter found little difficulty in assuming a 
power to buy Alaska. It is needless to say 
that the consent of its few civilised inhabi- 
tants or its natives was no more asked than 
in any previous case, except that of Texas, 
where the original proposition of annexation 
came from that people. And in this con- 
nection, with the fact that the natural expec- 
tation was that Alaska should remain under 
a territorial form of government or be gov- 
erned directly by the President and Congress, 
it should not be forgotten that a territorial 
form of government is practically the gov- 
ernment of a colony. The government 
does not rest upon the consent of the gov- 
erned. And, while in all previous cases 
such a condition of affairs was to be but a 
temporary expedient, and the form of govern- 
ment adopted in most cases allowed enough 

76 



ALASKA 

local self-government to familiarise all the 
people with it and with the principles of the 
future State government, in Alaska it was 
expected to be permanent. Whether this is 
in accordance with the spirit of our institu- 
tions or not is not to be discussed here. In 
Alaska the circumstances, geographical or 
otherwise, of the territory, should be consid- 
ered. But the question is raised, if, under 
our Constitution, we may hold commu- 
nities, because of geographical or climatic 
conditions likely to keep the number of in- 
habitants small, under a sort of colonial gov- 
ernment, — government from Washington 
and not from themselves, — may we not also 
hold them in this way because of peculiarities 
or characteristics in the population ? 

Alaska is our name for the Russian pos- 
sessions in America ceded to us in 1867. 
Russia's title was that of discovery. Bering, 
in the service of that country, after he found 
out in 1728 that Asia and North America 
were not connected by land, started in 1741 
on another voyage of discovery. On July 
1 8 of that year " he sighted a rocky range 
of coast, behind which towered lofty moun- 
tains, their summits white with perpetual 
snows," and thus caught his first glimpse 



77 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

of what was afterward known as Russian 
America. The Russians were soon active 
in exploration. Search was made for a 
northeast passage to the Atlantic, and mer- 
cantile adventurers examined the coast and 
islands. In 1783 Russian companies began 
the fur trade, afterward participated in to 
some extent by Americans. Russia, how- 
ever, did not penetrate far inland. The 
Hudson's Bay Company were already in the 
field in the interior. In 1825 a treaty fixed 
the line between British and Russian posses- 
sions, while the year before (1824) Russia, 
by treaty with the United States, as stated 
awhile ago, fixed her southern limit at the 
parallel of 54 40'. She also granted to our 
people certain fishing privileges ; but her gov- 
ernment so construed the compact as to 
exclude our vessels from just the places to 
which they wanted to go, where the fishing 
was known to be the best. 

It was the desire of the Pacific Coast for 
additional privileges that brought about the 
treaty of 1867, which gave us the whole 
country. The cod-fishing carried on by 
vessels from San Francisco had become by 
that year quite an industry. In 1865 one 
of the officials of Washington Territory re- 

78 



ALASKA 

ported the abundance of cod and halibut in 
this region of Alaska, and said : " No one 
who knows these facts for a moment doubts 
that, if vessels used by the Bank fishermen 
that sail from Massachusetts and Maine 
were fitted out here and were to fish on the 
various banks along this coast, it would even 
now be a most lucrative business." The 
legislature of that same territory, by formal 
resolution, called the attention of the general 
government to the great value of the fisheries 
of the Russian American coast, and peti- 
tioned for the adoption of such measures as 
would obtain for Americans the right to fish 
in these waters. The desire to obtain fish- 
ing-grounds in the western waters, as well 
as in the eastern, and to gain them free 
from the entanglements of those in the East, 
and possibly a desire to have another naval 
station on the Pacific, as President Johnson 
in a message to Congress suggested, must 
have been controlling factors in the mind of 
the administration in making the treaty, to 
say nothing of the value of the fur and seal 
industry. The mineral wealth was of a de- 
cidedly uncertain character. 

Russia was quite willing to dispose of her 
holdings in America. These possessions 

79 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

would be hard to defend in case of war, es- 
pecially with England ; and yet it would be 
at least annoying to lose them through war. 
They afforded no strength to her, but were 
rather a weakness. Then she wanted the 
money. So the transfer was easily brought 
about. It is quite possible that our own diffi- 
culties with the reconstruction problems at the 
time distracted the interest of the public in the 
transaction, for the treaty ceding the country 
to us, made March 29, 1867, occasioned very 
little discussion, and was ratified with sub- 
stantial equanimity on April 9. When we 
came to pay over the cash called for by the 
treaty, there was a little delay. It seemed to 
many quite a lot of money for a purchase of 
doubtful value. Congress finally appropri- 
ated the amount ; and it was charged, but not 
proven, that quite a corruption fund was 
necessary to effect this. It is true, however, 
that a very respectable sum was used in 
writing up the country in favourable terms. 

We paid $7,250,000 for it, and acquired 
about 580,000 square miles of territory, in- 
habited by some 60,000 people, mostly 
Esquimaux, — a native population which, like 
that of our Indians, is diminishing in its 
contact with civilization. The treaty pro- 

80 



ALASKA 



vided that such of the civilised inhabitants 
as remained in Alaska were to have all the 
rights of citizens of the United States. 

With this acquisition the United States 
has, up to this time, remained content so far 
as any territory on or adjacent to this conti- 
nent is concerned. The power of our gov- 
ernment to annex foreign territory seems to 
be pretty well established by precedent but, 
with the exception of Texas, — which, how- 
ever, had a population in which the American 
element was largely predominant, — all our 
acquisitions, up to the time of and including 
Alaska, were of sparsely settled countries. 
Louisiana was no exception ; for nearly all 
its population was clustered round New Or- 
leans, leaving an immense space inhabited 
almost wholly by Indians. Outside of 
Alaska the acquisitions have opened outlets 
for immigration from the older States and 
from abroad; and the new territories have 
become American in thought and institu- 
tions because the pioneers in all these new 
countries were largely Americans. " They 
have been a leaven in the European immi- 
gration which followed. The two elements, 
acting together, have built up communities 
capable of taking a place among the self- 
governing States." 

81 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

Whether Alaska be considered an excep- 
tion, from its peculiar location and from the 
circumstances which seemed to make its 
acquisition desirable, or whether it be con- 
sidered as an established precedent, the re- 
cent steps in the enlargement of our territory 
are certainly of a different character from 
any which have gone before. These acqui- 
sitions of to-day show that, admitting our 
constitutional power to acquire territory, we 
professedly are guided now by different reasons 
from those in the old days, when our country 
was younger. 



8* 



CHAPTER X. 



HAWAII. 

Thirty-one years elapsed after the pur- 
chase of Alaska before we entered upon a 
new career of territorial expansion ; and we 
began by annexing the Hawaiian Islands. 
In doing this, we took a long step forward, 
admitting that we can find authority for so 
doing in the earlier precedents. Since it 
marks something of a departure from our 
course of action up to this point, a some- 
what more extended account of the causes 
which resulted in this annexation seems de- 
sirable. Whereas all the former acquisitions 
had been of territory which seemed suitable 
for emigration of our people or presented 
commercial advantages, Hawaii offers little 
field for emigration, for in 1890 only 4,695 
persons owned the land, and more than half 
the soil had passed into European or Ameri- 
can hands ; and it would seem that most, if 
not all, the commercial benefits might have 
been obtained by a close alliance or protecto- 
rate. To be sure, political reasons prompted 
the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and 
indeed, of Texas and the land gained from 

83 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

Mexico ; but still the land gained was open, 
and suitable for emigration. In the case of 
Hawaii this fact is not present ; and political 
reasons alone governed the action taken. 
In fact, the annexation was justified on naval 
grounds or to protect the American interests, 
already paramount in the islands. 

The annexation was not accomplished 
without opposition, and in the end was 
helped, if not carried through, by supposed 
necessities arising out of the situation in 
which we found ourselves in the early part 
of our war with Spain in 1898. It was 
really the pressure of a small but energetic 
minority of American residents and sympa- 
thisers in Hawaii, rather than the wish of 
the United States, that inaugurated and main- 
tained the movement which led to annexa- 
tion. 

The Hawaiian Islands are a country two 
thousand miles away from our coast, and 
had in 1897 a population of 109,020, of 
which only 5,336 were Americans or British, 
and 39,504 native or half Hawaiians, who 
held at least a nominal share in the govern- 
ment. Portuguese, Germans, Japanese and 
Chinese made up the rest of the mixed 
population, — the Japanese and Chinese, to 

84 



HAWAII 



the number of 46,023, having no part in 
the government actual or nominal. 

Loving political freedom as we do, and 
with our own inborn energy, somehow we 
have a feeling of compassion, mingled with 
a tinge of impatience, as we read the history 
of these islands since Captain Cook dis- 
covered them in 1778, three years after we 
had begun the fight for our own indepen- 
dence. The people are a race redeemed from 
barbarism. Mr. Schouler speaks of the 
native Hawaiian as " timid to resist the 
encroachments of a more powerful race, 
docile without strong traditions of his own, 
frail, but well-intentioned in morals " ; and 
another refers to him as possessing, to an 
unusual degree, a capacity for fine and ardent 
enthusiasm for noble ends. The gentle 
Hawaiians show the distinctive Christian 
traits, " not always predominant among their 
more civilised teachers, of simple faith, 
meekness, self-sacrificing hospitality, and 
forgiveness of their enemies by whom they 
have suffered." More than half of them 
can read and write, — a showing which should 
particularly commend them to us, especially 
since this moral and intellectual growth was 
planted and fostered by American mission- 

8 P 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

aries. And we should not forget that it was 
under native rulers that this uplifting began 
and was continued. We must feel a sym- 
pathy for them as we see how their own 
government came more and more under the 
influence and control of foreign residents, 
chiefly Americans, until the native Hawaiians 
were relegated to a very subordinate place in 
their own country. As the Indian here is 
disappearing before the civilisation of his 
conquerors, so the Hawaiian is fading away 
under the protection of the aliens he ad- 
mitted to his home. 

When Captain Cook was there, the islands 
were ruled by separate chiefs independent of 
each other ; but one of them by his superior 
ability subdued all the islands except two, 
which yielded their allegiance to his suc- 
cessor. The first Hawaiian king, as Kame- 
hameha I., began a dynasty which lasted 
until the death of Kamehameha V. in 
1874 without a successor. The interference 
by the French in 1837 led to a formal decla- 
ration of independence in 1840 and the pro- 
mulgation of a constitution by Kamehameha 
III. The independence of the islands was 
recognised in 1844 by England and the 
United States. Christianity had been intro- 

86 



HAWAII 

duced by Kamehameha II.; and the disposi- 
tion of the islanders was such that the 
Christian religion made rapid progress, and, 
with occasional relapses, it has maintained its 
hold upon them. The influence of the mis- 
sionary is seen all through these earlier days ; 
and the influence of his descendants, not 
wholly directed toward the religious welfare 
of the natives, has been almost equally 
strong. 

Again, in 1849, new complications with 
the French occurred; and hostile preparations 
were begun, which were interrupted only 
upon the protests of the English and Amer- 
ican representatives. When once again, in 
185 1, the French threatened hostilities, the 
king, Kamehameha III., found it advisable 
to strengthen his alliance with the United 
States ; and, acting upon the advice of Ameri- 
can missionaries and American residents, he 
promulgated a new constitution, admitting 
a small number of foreigners to each of the 
two houses of the legislature. Annexation 
to the United States even then was discussed, 
but afterward abandoned. 

When Kamehameha V. died, in 1874, 
without a successor, the legislature, chiefly 
through external American influence, elected 

87 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

as king, Kalakaua, one of the royal house, 
over the dowager queen Emma, a daughter of 
an English physician. In Kalakaua's reign, 
in 1876, a treaty of reciprocity was arranged 
with the United States, which developed a 
marvellous interchange of products on our 
Pacific coast. The broadening of commerce 
arising from this act carried to Hawaii a 
large " amount of American invested capital, 
together with a fair colony of sojourners 
more or less constant " from this country. 

Kalakaua's course as king was hardly on 
a par with that of his predecessors ; and his 
dissipation and his government produced a 
revolution in 1887, which secured a consti- 
tution so liberal in its treatment of the white 
residents as to be, to use Mr. Schouler's 
words, " unparalleled in the dealings of civi- 
lised nations with aliens." Under that con- 
stitution procured by the white residents, 
foreigners who took the oath to support the 
Hawaiian government were permitted to reg- 
ister as voters with a distinct reservation of 
allegiance to their own governments. Under 
it a citizen of the United States could remain 
such, and still have the right to vote in 
Hawaiian elections, while he was a resident, 
by simply swearing to support the government. 

88 



HAWAII 

It deprived the sovereign of his absolute veto 
upon legislation, and took away from him 
his power under the old constitution of ap- 
pointing the members of the Upper House. 
Naturally, actual power passed to the foreign 
residents, if they kept in accord. In prac- 
tice the successive kings had appointed white 
men as ministers, nobles, and judges, in pref- 
erence to men of their own race, while sons 
of missionaries and the English-speaking 
residents in general had always occupied 
high places and reaped very satisfactory pe- 
cuniary benefits. With this position already 
gained, the new constitution made this class 
still more powerful, as it was also the more 
aggressive. 

Matters stood in this way when, in 1891, 
Kalakaua died while on a tour to the United 
States, where American interests saw to it 
that he was entertained right royally. Liliu- 
okalani, his sister and successor, was pro- 
claimed queen ; and almost immediately 
schemes for annexation to the United States 
began to be formed. 

The foreign sojourners — American citi- 
zens still, for the most part — became in- 
tensely anxious, in the interest of a stable 
government and of their own pecuniary con- 

89 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

cerns as well, that the government of the 
United States should be extended over the 
islands ; while the white residents there, 
the descendants of missionaries and of offi- 
cials, naturally preferred a union with a 
strong government like our own to a possi- 
ble resumption of power by the natives, 
They wanted above all a stable government ; 
and if their sympathies with the annexation 
movement were not so strong, they were not 
bitterly opposed to it. 

The new queen, Liliuokalani, had an even 
stronger dislike than her predecessor for the 
constitution forced upon him in 1887; and 
she was a less pliable subject than he. Pas- 
sionate and high-strung as she was, with a 
strong love for her native subjects and loved 
by them, with a large native vote which, if 
it could all be brought out, might swamp the 
foreign vote, there was a danger that the 
power of the white residents might become 
less secure ; and the alien population recog- 
nized the danger. The queen found herself 
merely a figure-head in the government, a 
situation she could hardly abide. Her dis- 
position was reactionary, and her sympathies 
entirely with her native people. She had at 
least inklings of the design to annex her 

90 



HAWAII 



whole kingdom to the country whose citi- 
zens within her own dominion held a good 
share of the actual power. With such a 
woman (of little tact and headstrong in dis- 
pute) as queen, the annexation feeling grew 
stronger, until her own imprudence and folly 
threw the key of the situation into her oppo- 
nents' hands. 



9 1 



CHAPTER XI. 

HAWAII (Concluded). 

On Jan. 14, 1893, t ^ le legislature was 
prorogued, not to meet again until May, 
1894, having at the last moment turned out 
of office a ministry favoured by the reformers 
and the foreign element. The new minis- 
try thus put in power, which must remain 
in power until a new legislature should meet, 
stood for nothing except personal and politi- 
cal success, so far as we can see. Politics 
in Hawaii did not seem to be all that could 
be desired. Charges of corruption were freely 
made, and personal intrigue was apparent in 
the doings of the legislature. The new min- 
istry, in fulfilling pledges probably given to 
the combination in the legislature which had 
put them in power, laid before the queen 
two measures, offensive to our people, but 
favoured by some local interests there, — a 
lottery act and an opium license act. The 
queen, although disliking the acts, affixed her 
signature to them because she wanted some- 
thing from the ministry in turn. It was un- 
fortunate for her that she did so, for it gave 
her opponents a chance to take "the high 



92 



HAWAII 

moral " ground against her ; but we cannot 
help feeling that, however strong their oppo- 
sition to these acts was, the annexationists 
cared more for her action in the matter as 
an argument against her than for the princi- 
ple involved. Having signed the bills, the 
queen brought forward her scheme. Urged 
by her own people and her own inclinations, 
but in practical defiance of the whole for- 
eign element, with a self-reliance which 
would have been admirable had it not been 
so indiscreet, she submitted a new constitu- 
tion, which she wished immediately pro- 
claimed in place of that of 1887. It was 
not such an extremely reactionary document. 
It practically put the supreme law back 
where it was before the revolution of 1887, 
but it proposed one or two changes which 
would necessarily be opposed by the white 
residents. The queen wished to take away 
the life tenure of the judiciary, and, most 
sweeping change of all, to reduce the prop- 
erty qualification for the suffrage, and pro- 
vide that only subjects should vote. We 
can hardly blame her for desiring that last 
step. 

The ministry saw that it would not do. 
Although the right of the sovereign to pro- 



93 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

claim a new constitution strictly followed 
precedent, the changes suggested would pro- 
duce a revolution in any event. They struck 
down the safeguards of the rich and intelli- 
gent foreign element, whose presence and 
capital had made the prosperity of the whole 
community. Even the queen felt bound to 
gain her ministry's consent to promulgate 
the document ; and, when she failed to ob- 
tain that, she submitted. w With heartfelt 
sorrow and yet queenly self-control " she 
announced to the Hawaiians from her royal 
balcony that, while she loved her people and 
would continue to love them, she could not 
then give them the constitution they wished 
for, but would do so some time. Even in this 
she yielded to her ministry after long discus- 
sion during the rest of the day, and aban- 
doned in full her purpose at any time to 
make the wished for changes ; and on the 
forenoon of the following Monday, January 
1 6, public announcement of that fact was 
made over her own signature. 

It would seem, therefore, that any need of 
resistance to her authority on account of her 
proposed action, now forever abandoned, 
was obviated ; but the zealous annexationists 
seized upon the opportunity to effect their 



94 



HAWAII 

purpose. The foreign residents assembled 
in mass meeting and appointed a Committee 
of Safety with discretionary powers. This 
committee, on January 16, issued a procla- 
mation abrogating the monarchical system 
and establishing a provisional government, 
consisting of an Executive Council of four 
" to exist until terms of union with the 
United States of America have been negoti- 
ated and acted upon." The council at once 
assumed control of the government, and 
obliged the queen to retire to her private res- 
idence ; and all this was accomplished with- 
out bloodshed. About the only force visible 
was a body of marines landed from an Amer- 
ican war vessel in the harbour of Honolulu. 
It is needless to say that this provisional 
government represented the foreign, and 
particularly, the American element at Ha- 
waii. Commissioners of this government 
were hurried off to Washington to negotiate 
a treaty of annexation, and they found there 
an almost suspiciously favourable reception. 

The unfortunate part which the United 
States played in this revolution was the all too 
prompt recognition of the new government 
by the resident United States minister at 
Honolulu, and the landing of American ma- 



95 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

rines, at his request, ostensibly to protect 
American interests, but practically to compel 
submission to the new order of things. 
Well may the queen complain that, but for 
the attitude of the accredited minister of a 
friendly nation, her government might have 
continued to exist. It cannot be doubted, 
from a review of the facts, that it was the 
marine force from our war-ship which made 
the bloodless revolution successful. 

A treaty of annexation was concluded by 
President Harrison's administration and, with 
a favourable recommendation, laid by him 
before the Senate on February 15, but 
later was withdrawn from that body by 
President Cleveland without action upon it 
having been taken. President Cleveland 
sent a commissioner to the Hawaiian Is- 
lands to investigate, and his message to 
Congress, upon receiving the commissioner's 
report, shows his own conviction of the in- 
justice to the Hawaiians committed in assist- 
ing the revolution with our troops. Yet 
political conditions here, the rancour of party 
feeling, the appeals to a false pride, and, 
above all, the situation into which affairs at 
Honolulu had grown, made a solution of the 
problem difficult. Secretary Gresham's plan, 

9 6 



HAWAII 

as outlined in his report, favouring a restora- 
tion of the political conditions which existed 
in Hawaii previous to the revolution, so far 
as United States troops had assisted in that 
revolution, was attended with almost insup- 
erable objections. All that the President 
could do was to withdraw the protectorate 
over Hawaii which Minister Stevens had 
established on February 9, pending action by 
Congress on the treaty of annexation ; and 
this was done on April 14, 1893. 

On July 4, 1894, the provisional govern- 
ment was dissolved, and a republic pro- 
claimed. The movement for annexation 
was then more vigourously carried on than 
before; and on June 16, 1897, another trea ty 
of annexation was sent to the Senate by 
President McKinley. But this was never 
acted upon. After that we became involved 
in war with Spain, and, as one result of 
that, joint resolutions providing for the an- 
nexation of Hawaii passed Congress, and 
were approved by President McKinley, July 

7 , 1898. 

The war with Spain, like all other wars, 
was attended by unexpected results. What- 
ever may have been in the minds of our 
public men, certainly in the minds of the 



97 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

people of this country there was no other 
idea in the early part of 1898 than to free 
Cuba from Spanish control, — to end the 
bloodshed and scandal of misrule at our doors. 
When effecting that object brought us into 
war with Spain, and when, in the course of 
that war, Puerto Rico and Manila fell into 
our hands, a new thought forced itself into 
the minds of many of our people, a new 
vision of the future spread itself before their 
eyes. No longer, with the weakness of 
youth, would we shelter ourselves behind our 
ocean barriers, but with the strength of a 
young manhood we would take up our 
part in redeeming the world from barbarism. 
With such views developing in the pop- 
ular mind, it was easy for the ardent 
annexationists of Hawaii and the United 
States to persuade what had hitherto been 
a reluctant people to consent to a union 
with Hawaii, to take advantage of our own 
wrong-doing. For it was alleged with con- 
siderable vigour that those islands were a 
needed station on the route to the far-off 
Philippines, and that, if we were to hold sway 
at Manila, we scarcely could do without 
Hawaii. Looking at it in this way, the ac- 
quisition of the Hawaiian Islands is a part 

9 8 



HAWAII 

only of a scheme of expansion upon which 
we have entered, and the supposed necessity 
of the acquisition may justify the departure 
from all our traditions which such annexa- 
tion involves. 

I do not need to enlarge upon the prob- 
lems brought to us by this annexation, diffi- 
cult and unusual with us as they are. With 
Hawaii we indeed entered upon a new 
career ; and, in addition to solving the prob- 
lem of just and decent government at home, 
— by no means yet finished, — we have taken 
upon our shoulders the government of new 
and strange people. Still, the annexation 
having been accomplished, it behooves us to 
meet the difficulties as wisely and as best we 
can. 



99 



CHAPTER XII. 



CONCLUSION. 

I have dwelt at considerable length upon 
this Hawaiian annexation, because, in addi- 
tion to its being a new departure in our 
history, it is so closely connected with the 
policy which we are pursuing in regard to 
acquiring territories in the West Indies and 
the East. It is not my purpose to enter into 
any discussion of these latter enlargements 
of the territory covered by our flag. Their 
story is fresh in our minds ; and, with Ha- 
waii, they make another chapter in our his- 
tory, quite different from what has gone 
before. 

In every acquisition, up to those of Puerto 
Rico and the Philippines, it has been our 
own interest which has been consulted. 
Now we are entering upon a career of 
acquisition for ostensibly a different set of 
reasons, — the benefit of the people brought 
under our dominion ; and Hawaii was a 
step in aid of that object. It is not for me 
in this place to say where we shall or should 
stop, nor do I wish to speak of the advan- 
tages or disadvantages to ourselves of such a 
course. 



CONCLUSION 

The result of this review of our past 
shows us, I believe, that our country has 
grown not only in territory, but in the power 
of its federal government to extend its sphere 
and enlarge its boundaries in whatever di- 
rection it deems proper. There has been 
hardly a year since the acquisition of Louisi- 
ana, certainly not since the Mexican War, 
when the annexation of some island or 
country has not been proposed or discussed 
by some of our public men.> Cuba, San 
Domingo, Hayti, and countries in Central 
America, all have been considered in that 
connection. It is only in the cases told of 
in these pages where public sentiment or 
particular circumstances have brought about 
a union with our country. It has come to 
be, not a question of the constitutional power 
to acquire territory, but the desirability of its 
acquisition in each particular case. It is for 
us, the people, to say how far this extension 
of power shall go and how far we shall feel 
that we have the strength, or that it is our 
duty, to carry the benefits of our institutions. 
Others may sound the note of warning or 
exhort to further efforts : I have tried only to 
tell what we have done in the past, and why. 

The story of our acquisitions of territory 

IOI 



TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS 

is not all creditable to us. It shows us that 
the type of humanity which our institutions 
have evolved has been ready, as have the 
powers of the Old World, in the name of our 
country to wrong other people weaker than 
ourselves. This has been partly through ig- 
norance of the real facts ; but the past should 
teach us to be on our guard to prevent 
future actions by the Executive and Congress 
which are contrary to our professions. |The 
story of our acquisitions shows one thing 
clearly, that we have acquired foreign terri- 
tory whenever and wherever we have con- 
sidered it an advantage to do so, and the 
consent of the people affected has not been 
asked. - It is too late to doubt the power 
of our government, under our Constitution 
to-day, to do so. Whether we wish to limit 
that power in the future is an entirely differ- 
ent matter. If the people wish to make 
such a limitation, they can do so. Our 
great duty now is to consider well the acqui- 
sitions we do make, and to treat in accord- 
ance with the ideals and principles which 
have animated our truest patriots and wisest 
statesmen the people who come under our 
flag. If these people are not fitted to be 
citizens of self-governing States, all the more 



102 



CONCLUSION 

do we hold their welfare and happiness and 
development in our hands ; and our duty to 
them is a trust we cannot abuse if we would 
be true to our ideals and the hopes of 
humanity. 



103 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



the Grant of the Northwestern 




States and Territories now comprised 
within the boundaries of the 
acquisitions. 


Arkansas, Indian Territory, Iowa, Mis- 
souri, Nebraska, No. Dakota, So. 
Dakota, nearly whole of Louisiana, 
greater parts of Kansas, Minnesota, 
Montana, and Wyoming, and parts 
of Colorado and Oklahoma. 


Florida and small parts of Alabama, 
Louisiana, and Mississippi. 


Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and 
small parts of Montana and Wy- 
oming. 


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106 



APPENDIX 



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